A glance inside the Cabo Orange National Park

The road that links Macapá to Oiapoque, in Amapá, is within one of South America’s integrated development corridors. There are plans to cover it with tarmac all the way to the border and to connect it to the French Guiana via a bridge over the Oiapoque. In the meantime we still need have to bite plenty of dust to get to the point once known as the extreme north of Brazil . Oiapoque is a bustling gold mining town. It has many shops, restaurants, some bank branches, nightlife, and it hosts the headquarters of the Cabo Orange National Park. The office employs four workers, from the same Army of Brancaleone of which belong Christoph Jaster, head of the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, and his team.

The head of the Cabo Orange National Park, Ricardo Motta Pires, his deputy-in-chief Kelly Bonach, and the technicians Paulo Silestro and Ivan Vasconcelos, greet me with a contagious enthusiasm. They look like octopuses with tentacles that are able to carry several tasks simultaneously. Unfortunately, however, there is no way four people can take care of 619 thousand hectares of land, not with a million hands and all the good will. It is humanly (and “octopusly”) impossible.

Still they try. Thanks to their efforts, the park maintains successful enforcement activities in partnership with the Federal Police and the French Navy; has cooperation programs with ecotourism travel agencies in Caiena; has a well-trained and motivated team of firefighters and a beautiful turtle breeding program, as well as a partnership with the Regional Natural Park of French Guiana for the research of jaguars.

As regards the latter, I was privileged to go, along with a researcher and a technician from France, to the conservation area along the margins of the Cassiporé River. Our base was the community of Vila Velha. To get there we had to go on a three-hour drive by car and another three hours by speedboat, on a journey made up of beautiful landscapes that made me drunk with happiness.

Upon arriving at Vila Velha, however, I began to go through a little personal nightmare. It is easy to follow the environmental problems plaguing the Amazon sitting at our comfortable offices in southeastern Brazil. Easier even is to criticize and demand solutions. But there, in the middle of Amapá, isolated in one of the most beautiful national parks in Brazil, the hole is deeper.

Vila Velha has a population of about 250 inhabitants, whose monetary wealth is almost zero. There is little money in circulation, but I wouldn’t call them miserable. They live in a different era. They plant, are herders, fish and hunt, hunt a lot! It is only through hunting and fishing that they manage to have a minimally decent diet. It's their daily bread. They have been living there for almost a century, and have always hunted; it is part of their culture. The problem is that such culture is no longer sustainable.

Vila Velha didn’t always have 250 inhabitants. As soon as the Brazilian state started getting closer the population started to grow. Health led the way bringing vaccines, prophylactic prevention, and basic notions of hygiene. There was a rise in life expectancy. The elderly were living longer and fewer children were dying. At the same time, technological development brought more powerful guns, better traps, and speedboats. The challenge hunter-prey grew unequal.

Everything is eaten in Vila Velha: birds, lizards, snakes, mammals, and even jaguars. I paid a visit to Dona Raquel, born and bred in the village. She speaks candidly of hunting. She gives out recipes, describing textures and flavors. She takes pleasure in scrutinizing how to cook paca. “People eat even monkeys, but I don’t, the little thing looks like us”. She stands up and, smiling, shows me the spider monkey that was bought as a pet for 40 Brazilian reais, “a small fortune”. Iraelson, another resident, admits hunting is still common in the region, but "we take it easy when people from the Chico Mendes come over". I wonder what they eat. He says, "Everything but what is really nice is paca, caititu and queixada. I also appreciate venison’s meat” "But where are them all?” I ask, looking around for birds or other signs of life. Iraelson scratches his head and says, "The animals are increasingly keeping further away from the village. There is nothing left around here".

Not quite true. At dusk we go to see Bené. He is the local responsible for the Amazon Turtles Project. Bené is passionate about what he does: "When I was a child there were turtles everywhere. It was enough for everybody, more than enough. Now it is disgraceful. If it were not for the staff working at the park it would be over as well. Have a look at the other side, where there is no project there are no longer any turtles". Bene's work is simple. He patrols the shores of the river and locates spots where turtles lay their eggs. Before any collector digs them out to take to the pot, he removes them himself and takes them to a handcrafted incubator in Vila Velha. Thus ensuring the survival of a new generation of turtles. I go to bed relieved to know about Bené’s work.

On the next morning the uniqueness of the scale he represented is renewed by real life. Before leaving with the French researcher Benoit Thoisy and a staff from the park to check the cameras placed for counting the population of jaguars in a perimeter of 100 km2 within the Cabo Orange, we got the news of a foretold tragedy: six cameras (of each worth one thousand euros) had been smashed by vandals. The explanation given by Adalbertro Moraes, from the Previ-fogo fire brigade, who leaves in the community, was straightforward: "this was done by people who have been caught carrying their hunt. They would rather destroy the equipment than be on tape. They left the others alone because people found out where they were and they started to ward off". Benoit was heartbroken. He took me aside and asked, a little puzzled, "but isn’t hunting banned in Brazil?"

Fortunately it’s not all bad news. If the Brazilian government conservation policies are up in the air, education is starting to reach the far corners of the country. In Vila Velha there are two schools. One is a primary and the other secondary school. Teachers come in pairs from Macapá and stay in Vila Velha for six weeks in a row. They sleep in a dormitory of the Department of Education and during that time teach everything of a subject that would last a semester. Upon their leaving, they are replaced by another couple of teachers who will repeat the process on their particular subjects. The whole learning program is taught to the students through this rotation.

Walmira Santo Pereira Neta, a geography teacher, supports the park’s staff. In her classes she emphasizes the importance of the Turtle Project and the sustainable relationship with the forest. She tries to discourage hunting. At the moment she is crusading to instill better hygienic notions among the population: "look at the floor, there is plastic everywhere. These people have to learn to live in a cleaner environment". Walmira is right. Vila Velha’s soil is full of rubbish: plastic bags, plastic bottles and other non-biodegradable items that are thrown away after use, decorating the streets.

I take a late afternoon to visit the school. I arrive in the middle of the children's day party. The teachers are projecting a children's movie they brought from Macapá. In the end, cake was served along with juice and gifts were given away. The toys and dolls had been donated by business from all over the state. The eyes of Petiz shine. She grew up far from the city, from its malls and the frenetic consumerism. The kids ripe apart the wrapping, destroy the packaging. After the gifts are given, Walmira asks for attention. She threatens to take the presents back to Macapá. She looks disapprovingly at floor, littered with paper and trash. She conjures up anger. The kids are fast and it works. Within minutes, the floor of the school is pristine. The trash has been binned. Walmira is not through yet; she carries on with the lesson by saying that upon her return next module she dreams of seeing Vila Velha as clean as this!

Hunting, however, requires a more complex solution. How would the village go about feeding 250 stomachs if the practice were banned from their daily activities? The Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) has plans of other alternatives for employment and income, particularly aimed at tourism activities, but the truth is that, given the current poor infrastructure and the difficult access, that is a distant dream.

If it is worth dreaming Ricardo Motta Pires dreams are worth noticing. On the wall of his living room hangs a poster of a hydroplane painted with the colors of the ICMBio, with the help of his computer’s graphic tricks. That is his ideal of surveillance. While it does not take place, this dedicated employee is left with a boat that is always broken, three enthusiastic assistants and a smooth partnership with the Federal Police. That is a lot given the working conditions that were offered by the Brazilian State. It's little if we take into account the needs of the Cabo Orange National Park.

How many park rangers are needed to ensure the integrity of a protected area? The International Ranger Federation maintains that the appropriate ratio is of a park ranger for each chunk of ten acres. For instance, data published by the federation on some Central American countries with dense forest similar to the Amazon but Honduras shows proportions close to the advocated: Guatemala: 1 to 7363 ha; Panama: 1 to 11,184 ha, Nicaragua: 1 to 12,526 ha and Honduras: 1 to 22,201 ha. In the U.S. the ratio is 1 to 8200 ha. At Cabo Orange the relation is 1 to 150 thousand hectares!

If it’s worth dreaming I lay in my hammock under the scorching heat of the night at Vila Velha, close my eyes and let my mind wander. I see the day that the Bolsa Família will develop into a program of low skill training aiming at supplying workers to the Conservation Units. I also dream a more tangible dream, which is not so impossible. It’s a whim that incorporates creative and unorthodox solutions, although connected to the state policies. The activity of park rangers does not require great expertise. Their routine involves surveillance patrols, wildlife monitoring, visitors’ assistance and physical activities such as maintenance of trails and removal of exotic species. In this regard, youngsters old enough to serve the army could be employed as workers on the conservation units.

The very National Defense Strategy, published by the government, opens the door to the fulfillment of my dreams. Its achievement would ensure the consolidation of institutional presence in the Brazilian protected areas, ensure sufficient people to manage these parts of the country and improve the conditions of supervision and monitoring of parts of the country that are currently being neglected. It would also meet the objectives of the military whose official booklet urges, "in addition to compulsory military service social work will be instituted, at large proportions. The youngsters that were not sent to military service would be employed for community work. Conceived as a generalization of the aspirations of the Rondon Project, the social work will revolve around each one’s preferences and qualifications, been trained to able to participate in civil services... The participants of the social work will also get basic military training to enable them to integrate the force’s reserve, which will be mobilized according to necessity. They will be listed according to their qualifications for possible mobilization”.

I wake up feeling a little more optimistic. We walk six hours through the dense jungle, alternating flooded areas and buritizais [species of the family of the palm tree]. We are out to check Benoit’s eleven cameras that should be still intact. On the way, Iraelson calls for more supervision to the employee of the park that came with us. He complains that trawlers from Belém do Pará and Macapá are often coming up the Cassiporé trawling "the fish that is starting to run out. You have to help us".

We removed old films, put new ones. We return to the river. I am privileged to witness the tidal bore. I will not waste time trying to describe what only those who were there will understand. I can only say that its noise is deafening, their passage memorable.

Back in town, Benoit checks the films. They bring good news. The recorded tapirs, coatis and...jaguars. Although Vila Velha represents a threat to its borders, the Cabo Orange National Park still shows itself capable of accommodating species from the top of the food chain.

We can celebrate and sleep peacefully. It is better, however, if the sleep is not too loose or in a too comfortable of a cradle. The inertia can cost a lot. It is in the hands of the Brazilian government, in its highest levels, to ensure that the Brazilian institutions with the constitutional mission of safeguarding our nature are provided with human and material resources necessary to accomplish the task that was to them assigned. It is worth having in mind that we dream when sleeping but dreams usually reflect the reality of our daily lives. When this reality is unpleasant and stressful, what was good and buoyant soon becomes a nightmare.

[1] I was thought at schools that the Brazilian furthest points were the Oiapoque and the Chuí. Nowadays that we can rely on more accurate measuring tools we know that the far North of Brazil is in Roraima.