Qualla: Serra do Conduru State Park

Serra do Conduru State Park: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rivieiraa, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1993, a botanist counted 456 tree species in a single hectare of Serra do Conduru. That number — 456 species, still among the highest tree diversity counts ever recorded on Earth — helped spark the campaign to make this patch of Atlantic Forest a state park. Four years later, the park existed on paper. Twenty years later, it still existed on the ground, which is not a given in rural Bahia. Today Serra do Conduru covers 9,275 hectares spread across three municipalities - Uruçuca, Itacaré, and Ilhéus - and protects dense submontane rainforest that, when researchers looked closely, turned out to share 72 percent of its tree species with the Amazon, 2,500 kilometers to the northwest.

Image: Rivieiraa | CC BY-SA 4.0

Serra do Conduru State Park: A Forest Coming Back

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paulo P. Paiva, CC BY-SA 4.0. Serra do Conduru is recovering. Most of its forest is in some stage of succession, regrowing from the cocoa farms, sawmills, and cattle pasture that were here before the park existed. Walk a trail and the variation is visible - a cleared hillside in early regrowth, shrub-dense an...

Image: Paulo P. Paiva | CC BY-SA 4.0

Serra do Conduru State Park: Who Is In the Understory

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. Serra do Conduru is one of the last refuges of the golden-headed lion tamarin, whose entire world range is this patch of southern Bahian coast. Golden-bellied capuchins move through the canopy. Cougars and ocelots hunt the ridges - the park is one of the few places in eastern Bra...

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

Serra do Conduru State Park: The Long Fight for the Paperwork

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thyalla Sena Solon, CC BY-SA 4.0. The push to protect Serra do Conduru began in 1993. Conservation International Brazil, the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation, and the Bahian IESB institute ran the campaign through the 1990s. The park was formally created by state decree 6.227 on 21 February 1997. The next year, the ...

Image: Thyalla Sena Solon | CC BY-SA 4.0