Acordos de conservação da Reserva Biológica do Lago Piratuba

Abstract

The Piratuba Lake Biological Reserve was created in 1980 as an area for non-human occupation and free of direct use of natural resources. However, traditional populations were previous occupying and using the area at several locations within the proposed limits. Considering such use and occupation conflicting with the category of the protected area, standards and specific actions were established to reconcile the presence of the resident traditional populations with the objectives of the biological reserve through ‘terms of commitment’. The term of commitment collective construction and its signing off with the traditional population in Sucuriju was an important step forward in the management, contributing to the transformation of a serious conflict into an opportunity for nature conservation and enabling the compatibility
of small-scale fishing with the objectives of the protected area. Moreover, it also triggered a participatory monitoring of fisheries production action. The term has being implemented with great compliance of therules; being monitored and assessed through fish landings, fish purchase declaration, annual registration
of vessels and accoutrements, annual registration of fish buyers, annual counts of arapaima populations,
arapaima capture structure, evaluation meetings, and environmental control strategies. The monitoring
results indicate that the populations of managed species are healthy, contributing to the conservation of the
biological reserve. Other terms of commitments were signed off with the communities of Tabaco, Milagre
de Jesus, Paratu and Araquiçaua, allowing closer ties with these populations and establishing strategies to
minimize community environmental impacts, caused mainly by buffalo ranching. However, an adequate
implementation of these terms has still not been possible, which affects the relationship with the populations as well as the possibility of reducing the environmental impacts of human activities. This situation is directly related to the reduced staff number in combination with the management challenges in this biological reserve, as the environmental emergencies occurring in recent years. Shared management in Piratuba Lake Biological Reserve is still incipient and many improvements are still to be put in place based on the results of the monitoring program. Furthermore, the implementation of the terms of commitment and fish stocks monitoring are directly related to the evaluation of the strategic objectives of management and with the
planning revisions of the protected area.