Conservation Significance of Kayapo Lands
Kayapo lands present one of the world’s greatest opportunities for the conservation of tropical forest wilderness because they are:
- Exceptionally large;
- Legally protected;
- Controlled by a single, well-organized ethnic group with livelihood and culture that is sustained by a forest ecosystem;
- Inhabited at low population density by their guardians; and,
- Allied with NGO’s dedicated to empowering conservation and development by indigenous people.
Kayapo indigenous lands are of particular conservation value because of the mixture of closed canopy Amazonian forest and central Brazilian savanna or cerrado. Many endangered species native to the southeastern Amazon are encountered regularly in the Kayapo territory including white lipped peccary, giant otter, giant armadillo, jaguar, and hyacinth macaw.
Surveys show that Kayapo territory is reasonably pristine and ecologically intact as demonstrated by the presence of healthy populations of some of the Amazon’s most sensitive and vulnerable animal species. Large bodied game species such as tapir, white lipped peccary and giant armadillo which are preferred by local peoples throughout the Amazon are abundant because Kayapo territory is so large that most of the area is not hunted. In fact, no other large forest reserve in southeastern Amazonia currently safeguards as many disturbance sensitive wildlife species and the entire vegetation transition from open savanna (cerrado) to close canopy forests.
Also of critical conservation significance is the long stretch of Xingu river (over 400 Kms) protected from deforestation, pollution and over-fishing within Kayapo lands and the contiguous Xingu Indigenous Park. Of the nearly 1,500 fish species found in the Xingu River, 16 are considered endemic as they occur only in this watershed. Fish are a critical protein source for indigenous and other local peoples of the region.
At 10.5 million hectares, Kayapo territory protects large scale ecological processes and regional climate services such as rainfall. Landscape scale protection is necessary for the regeneration of
many hundreds of tropical tree species that form the forest. Almost 90% of Amazonian tree species occur locally at very low densities – less than one individual per hectare. These species, however, have high absolute population sizes across large landscapes. They depend on a wide variety of animals (insects, birds, bats, monkeys, etc) for pollination across large inter-individual distances and dispersal of their seeds to microsites that are suitable for germination. Small areas of forest are not large enough to sustain the many animal species that perform these critical reproductive services for trees; nor are they large enough to maintain populations of many tree species that are high enough for adequate reproduction over the longterm. The dauntingly intricate web of interdependence among Amazonian species requires large areas to function and persist.
