Brazil's Tumucumaque park protects more rainforest than all of Belgium
Covering more than 38,800 km² of Amazon forest, Tumucumaque Mountains National Park is the largest tropical forest national park in the world. Joined with French Guiana's neighbouring park, the protected block reaches about 59,000 km², and most of its fish and water birds live nowhere else.
The park lies in the Brazilian states of Amapá and Pará, with French Guiana and Suriname along its northern edge. Brazil's government declared it on 23 August 2002 after working with the WWF, and the following year it became part of the newly created Amapá Biodiversity Corridor. It receives backing from the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program, and its management plan came out on 10 March 2010. Amapá's highest point, at 701 m, is inside its borders.
Size comparisons depend on what is counted. Tumucumaque plus the adjoining Guiana Amazonian Park still falls short of the three linked parks on the Brazil–Venezuela border, Pico da Neblina, Serranía de la Neblina and Parima-Tapirapeco, whose areas together exceed 73,000 km². Add the large reserves of northern Pará, such as Grão-Pará Ecological Station and Maicuru Biological Reserve, however, and the Guiana Shield becomes one of the largest and best-protected rainforest corridors anywhere. The region is uninhabited and shelters jaguars, primates, river turtles and harpy eagles.
The climate is tropical monsoon, averaging 25 °C, with 2,000 to 3,250 mm of rain a year. Visitors come through two sectors. For Amapari, most start from Serra do Navio, or in summer from a community at Pedra Branca do Amapari, then ride aluminium boats 90 km up the Amapari River to a rustic hammock camp for trails, river swims and wildlife watching.
In the Oiapoque sector, boats run 40 km from the town of Oiapoque to camp at the Anotaie waterfall on a tributary of the Oiapoque River. Travellers can also stop at Vila Brasil, a trading village on the river's right bank opposite the French Guianese Indigenous community of Camopi, where small hotels serve visitors. Mozilla even gave the Firefox 4 beta the code name Tumucumaque.
Source: Tumucumaque Mountains National Park
