Qualla: Serra das Lontras National Park

Serra das Lontras National Park: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antonio Carlos dos Santos Andade, Public domain. Of the 330 bird species recorded in Serra das Lontras, sixteen are globally threatened with extinction. Another thirteen are near-threatened. That density of fragility - in a park of only 113 square kilometers, tucked above the cacao belt of southern Bahia - is a measure of how much Atlantic Forest has already been lost and how much is riding on what remains. Brazil's Mata Atlântica once stretched from the Northeast coast down to Rio Grande do Sul. Today less than twelve percent survives, most of it in scraps like this one: a Precambrian coastal range rising from 400 meters to peaks above 1,000, where the golden-headed lion tamarin still swings through canopy 30 meters overhead.

Image: Antonio Carlos dos Santos Andade | Public domain

Serra das Lontras National Park: A Forest in Layers

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Aacj03 assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Walk up from the park's boundary and the forest changes with the elevation. Below 400 meters, lowland rainforest runs thick - figs, palms, the leaf canopy closing overhead at 30 meters, the air damp with 2,000 millimeters of annual rainfall. Higher, the canopy shortens. Above 800...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Aacj03 assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Serra das Lontras National Park: What Lives Up There

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leandro M800, CC0. The list of mammals protected inside the park reads like an inventory of what southern Bahia's forest used to hold everywhere and now holds almost nowhere. The golden-headed lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysomelas) is endemic to this region - a small, fire-orange-and-black prima...

Image: Leandro M800 | CC0

Serra das Lontras National Park: A Late Protection

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The park came late. It was created by federal decree on 11 June 2010, more than a decade after Brazilian conservation scientists had identified the Serra das Lontras as one of the highest-priority sites in the Atlantic Forest. Administration falls to the Chico Mendes Institute fo...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0