Observatory of Protected Areas: Biodiversity in Brazilian PAs

Protected areas (PAs) represent a priceless national asset, with an enormous potential to promote significant benefits to human well-being as well as to the country’s development in a rational and sustained manner. These PAs are areas for biodiversity conservation, the protection of endangered species and the promotion of sustainable development, besides providing means and incentives for research development, environmental education and public use. The PAs occupy around 17% of the Brazilian territory, in different categories and management spheres.

With the objective of gathering essential data for the study, monitoring and evaluation of PAs in Brazil, the Observatory of Protected Areas (obervatorio.wwf.org.br) was launched by WWF-Brazil and partner institutions in 2012. The information conveyed on the website can be used for planning strategies and actions in order to improve PA knowledge, monitoring and management.

Two years after the launching of the Observatory, a great volume of documents and information is already available for consultation and download. The data insertion process and adjustments is ongoing and looks to incorporate information as up-to-date as possible. Besides the daily work of the Observatory team, the contribution of partners, PA managers, researchers and independent users has contributed for improving the database and the online platform.

The goal of this publication is to disclosure consolidated biodiversity data from Brazilian protected areas and discuss their potentialities. From this, we hope to broaden the use of this information and identify new partners to expand the Observatory.

We want to make it an even more complete system, updated and easy to use for anyone interested in having access to information about protected areas in Brazil.