Trairão National Forest

Trairão National Forest (Portuguese: Floresta Nacional do Trairão) is a national forest in Brazil. It is in the state of Pará. It has a large Amazon rainforest and many living things. It is a sustainable use conservation unit. This means people are allowed to come to the forest to do things, for example cut down trees for wood. But they must follow special rules. The government made these rules to stop illegal forest cutting. Place The forest is in parts of the Tapajós and Xingu river basins. The Trairão National Forest has 257,526 hectares (636,360 acres) of Amazonia place in it. It was made a protected place on February 13, 2006. The federal Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation runs it. Parts of the town places of Trairão (69.2%), Rurópolis (22.0%) and Itaituba (8.8%) in the state of Pará are in the forest. The main towns nea nearby are Trairão, Itaituba, Rurópolis, and Santarém. This forest is next to the Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve to the east and the Jamanxim National Park to the south. The forest is named after the Trairão town, which is named after the trairão (Hoplias lacerdae) fish. 260,905 people live near the forest. The forest is near 12 other sustainable use conservation areas and 6 fully protected areas. The fully protected areas, which are 6,670,422 hectares (16,482,970 acres) in size together, are the Amazônia, Jamanxim, Rio Novo, and Serra do Pardo national parks, the Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve, and the Terra do Meio Ecological Station. The sustainable use areas are the Tapajós environmental protection area, the Altamira, Amaná, Jamanxim, Trairão, Itaituba I, Itaituba II and Tapajós national forests. Together, they are 7,555,889 hectares (18,671,010 acres) in size. Roads and rivers People go to the forest on roads from the BR-163 highway, which is west of the forest. People can come from Itaituba may by boat along the Tapajós River, which runs further to the west. The boat ride from Santarém to Itaituba takes 15 hours. The main waterways in the park are the Branco, Itapacurá, and Cuparí rivers. Although there are many rivers and streams, people can only use boats on a few of them. The others are not deep enough, or have too many dangerous places. Environment The average altitude is 51 metres (167 ft). The average annual rainfall is about 2,000 millimetres (79 in), with a cooler rainy season in December to May and warmer dry season from June to November. The annual temperature is 25 to 28 °C (77 to 82 °F). Vegetation is 70% rainforest with plants close together and 30% rainforest with plants further apart. The forest has waterfalls, igapó flooded forest, and stream forest, which means many different living things can live there. A short study of reptiles and amphibians in two parts of the forest in September 2009 recorded 94 species of amphibians and reptiles: There were 35 species of amphibian, four species of turtle, the smooth-fronted caiman, 23 species of lizard, and 31 species of snake. 64 species of fish have been found in the park. They are in the families Characiformes (33), Siluriformes (16), Perciformes (7) Gymnotiformes (6), Cyprinodontiformes (1), and Synbranchiformes (1). Conservation The Management Plan for the forest was published in March 2010. It said that people cut down trees even though this was against the law, took things away from the forest even though this was against the law, hunted, fished, built farms, and made roads. The Trairão National Forest is a IUCN protected area category VI. This means that people can go there to get things to use, but they must follow rules. This way, people will be able to use things, for example wood, from the forest for many years, and scientists will be able to study things there. The forest was created so there would be less destruction of forests in the Amazon and to stop the loss of living things from logging, farms with only one plant, illegal farming, and cattle. People would cut down the rainforest to make places for cows to eat grass. This was bad for the animals that already lived in the forest, because they need water in the air to live. The area accessible from BR-163 had already lost 10.4% of its forest, and the ecosystems were broken into pieces. People also hope that the multiple-use forest will make more jobs for people who live nearby. Notes Sources