Bill proposes reduction of national park in RS

Bill 698/2023 proposes a 13% reduction in the area of ​​the Aparados da Serra National Park, located in Rio Grande do Sul. The proposal was presented by Senator Luis Carlos Heinze (PP-RS) and, if approved, will exclude an area of ​​1,300 hectares from the park, out of the 10,200 hectares protected. The proposal is based on a technical note issued by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) in August 2022. “The proposal in question aims to exclude the Morro do Agudo region from park management and clearly define the limits of the park through a bill, as this area would not be of environmental interest to the conservation unit”, justifies the author in the text. The technical note issued in August last year was requested by Senator Heinze, by the city hall of Cambará do Sul (RS) and by associations of residents and rural producers. The document concludes that there was an error regarding the location of the park and suggests a reduction through a bill, which was presented by Heinze himself in February of this year. According to the text of the Bill, the Morro do Agudo region consists “for the most part, of fields and farms with high-cost improvements”. ICMBio For ICMBio, the body responsible for federal ecological reserves, the technical note formalized by the previous management, which supported the bill, was not fully discussed by all the institute’s stakeholders. “In this way, ICMBio understands that it is necessary to reassess the issues presented, in order to propose new guidelines in line with the current management. With regard to territorial consolidation, the Aparados da Serra and Serra Geral national parks are management priorities and are in an advanced stage of regularization, with most of the properties already expropriated or in an advanced stage of procedural analysis”, informs the institute, through consultancy. According to information available on the ICMBio website, the Aparados da Serra National Park is made up of Atlantic Forest and Araucaria forests, in addition to fields and cliffs. The area is inhabited by several species of Brazilian fauna, such as the purple-breasted parrot, ocelot, raccoon and bay lion. The main attraction of the Conservation Unit is the Itaimbezinho canyon, with a depth of up to 700 meters.

Agência Brasil