The Mamirauá and Amanã Reserves

The Amazon Basin contains some of the largest expanses of wildlands in the tropics and the highest biological diversity of any major habitat on the globe. Yet the region’s spectacular natural resources are under growing pressure from a range of threats which rural Amazonian communities are often powerless to confront. In Brazil, WCS supports the Mamirauá and Amanã Sustainable Development Reserves in their pioneer efforts to enable local communities to protect the natural resources they depend on. At Mamirauá and Amanã, we are achieving conservation and sustainable development for the benefit of both wildlife and local communities.  

WCS has been working to protect the region’s wildlife since the early 1980s, when primatologist José Márcio Ayres began research on white uakari monkeys in the Mamirauá region of central Amazonas. His efforts to preserve Mamirauá’s flooded forests and to improve the livelihoods of local communities led to the creation in 1996 of the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve (SDR), a new model for conservation. Following the success of Mamirauá, the adjacent Amanã SDR was established in 1997. Mamirauá and Amanã SDRs, along with the adjacent Jaú National Park, form the largest protected area complex of tropical forests on the planet.

The Human Aspect
More than 10,000 people live in five small towns and dozens of small villages inside the Mamirauá and Amanã SDRs. These ribeirinhos, as they are known, manage the reserves collectively, making decisions on zoning, fishing quotas and development initiatives using information provided by scientists. Education, health and income indicators inside the reserves have improved dramatically over the last decade, thanks to widely supported management initiatives and income from ecotourism.

Threats
Roughly 1% of the Amazon Basin is lost to deforestation every year and the trend is getting worse – 2002 was the worst year for deforestation in a generation. The loss of millions of wild animals each year to commercial harvesting is another grave threat. Other regional threats include expanding infrastructure development projects, colonization and agroindustry.  Because of their remoteness, Mamirauá and Amanã SDRs are somewhat isolated from many of these threats. Nevertheless, poachers, loggers and commercial fishermen are increasingly drawn to the abundant natural resources inside the reserves. Mamirauá and Amanã’s communities are responsible for patrolling the vast landscape to prevent outsiders from Manaus or beyond from illegally extracting natural resources.

WCS Activities
WCS has been involved with Mamirauá and Amanã SDRs since their creation; WCS staff conducted the initial research and crafted and implemented their management plans. Today, WCS helps dozens of communities in Mamirauá and Amanã SDRs develop, implement and monitor strategies for the sustainable use of natural resources.  To achieve this, we provide technical support to the reserves’ managers, including helping them design and conduct wildlife surveys so that sustainable quotas may be set for fish and timber extraction. For example, thanks to science-based fishing quotas, populations of the commercially valuable pirarucú have dramatically increased since the early 1990s and the reserves’ fishermen are earning greater profits than ever before.

Mamirauá and Amaná are part of an ambitious Amazon-wide initiative through which WCS is testing common conservation strategies, such as science-based management of pirarucú and other commercially valuable wildlife, within a set of complex lived-in landscapes. We disseminate the lessons learned at Mamirauá and Amanã to other conservation projects across the Amazon.

Important Next Steps

• Promote improvements that maintain economic production yet minimize negative effects on wildlife, in the following sectors: fisheries, forestry and non-timber forest products, agriculture and ecotourism
• Replicate successful projects with key partners, based on a foundation of strong science, capacity building, community-based action, adaptive management and long-term financing