WHY PURANGA FLOW?
In Brazil, there is the PAN (National Plan for the Conservation of Amazonian Turtles) monitored and inspected by ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation). This plan created several protection areas where rivers help preserve the rivers to facilitate the elimination of turtles and allows the creation for personal consumption, without trade, of 16 species of Amazonian turtles, the twelve most popular for consumption by the riverside population and with these species traditional Amazonian dishes are prepared during the period of extinction.
These protected areas are difficult to access and very important for tourism.
In the case of Puranga, the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), together with the INPA (National Institute of Amazonian Research), established a “farm” that is known as a certain infrastructure for the study of turtles, which thanks to the relationship we have with the owners of the “heritage” that can be visited and who give us all the explanations of how the preservation program works.
The question posed is very current and for fear of tiring I will try to summarize, although the answer requires contextualizing the question and is a little longer:
BACKGROUND
Amazonian turtles have always been part of the eating habits of the indigenous tribes that inhabited the Amazon region and, since the beginning of the occupation and colonization promoted by the Portuguese, since the 17th century, Brazilian man has been exploiting the excess of turtles and species of chelonians, mainly the Amazonian turtle (Podocnemis expansa). The impressive massacre caused by the Jabuti population that produces 48 million eggs annually, according to Bates (1863), 400,000 eggs are born every year, as cited by Mittermeier (1978), and that, in addition, the eggs could represent the reproductive effort. 600,000 eggs per year, as Moll and Moll (2004) comment, and finally, Smith (1979) calculated that between the years 1700 and 1903 the eggs collected for the manufacture of illuminating oil in European cities would exceed 214 million eggs.
FOR GEOGRAPHY
The Amazon is a tropical forest that stretches along the Amazon River basin, a vast tropical natural area measuring approximately 6.74 million km². It covers 9 countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, French Guiana, Peru and Venezuela. Brazil has sovereignty over approximately 65% of this area, that is, the equivalent of 13 times that of Spain.
PQA PROGRAM (PRESERVATION OF AMAZONIAN CHELONIANS):
COMPENSATION MEASURES
This irrational past DRIVEN this program and we can say that since 1979, when the program was created, until today, more than 70 million descendants of PODOCNEMIDIDAE have been successfully managed.
PURANGA FLOW FUNDAMENTALS
THE FARM has an extension of 5km facing the left bank of the Rio Negro with about 6 beaches. It was explored (1980s and 1990s) as a traditional agricultural enterprise in 1996. As the owner of this area, the time has come for the aforementioned exploitation to have done more harm than good, especially to the AMAZON BIOME. That year we abandoned the activities, starting to protect and preserve this small piece of land – compared to the magnitude of the Amazon but equivalent to more than 500 hectares.
In the past, many species have almost disappeared, especially turtles, because this property is only 40 km from Manaus, i.e. 40 minutes by speedboat or 2 or 3 hours by slow regional speedboat. It is one thing to preserve a 12-day journey without communities or predatory pressures and another, very different and more difficult, thing to preserve it near large cities.
35 million people live across the Amazon Biome, with the majority (85%) living in the Brazilian Amazon. Of these 30 million inhabitants of the Brazilian Amazon, 70% (20 million) live in urban centers and the remaining 30% (10 million) live in rural areas, in the rainforest, either in communities or isolated in the forest.
When it comes to preserving a territory, it is more complex to involve areas close to large urban centres and with the presence of traditional communities (riverside or indigenous, as in our case), than when it comes to preserving areas far from large cities. Several days of river navigation and with little presence of traditional communities, where there is no predatory pressure generated by the urban population.
Over the course of almost 30 years of conservation, 6 years ago turtles began to appear on our beaches, previously deserted of this species. Turtles generally return, if abandoned, to their place of origin and we know that they are a very long-lived species.
From the above it is clear that after an “amateur” start 6 years ago, until now, it has become a place of constant growth in visits by turtles, which has allowed science (UFAM), the Federal University of Amazonas and CEQUA (INPA) The Amazon Research Institute and SEMA (Secretariat of the Environment of the Amazon) to generate a responsible, effective and widely accepted preservation and research program. SERIOUS
PURANGA FLOW’S STRENGTHS:
1. It is the closest legal preservation program (see attached document) to a large city like Manaus. We must understand that many of the PQA programs carried out by ICMBio (federal) are 12 days away by boat and another 12 days back from Manaus.
2. It is promoted by the private sector through agreements with federal institutions, with almost no payment for the services provided. The private sector is in charge of the infrastructure and the federal institutions, pays the salaries of researchers, doctors, laboratories, scholarships, etc., all with a common goal. LONG LIVE THE AMAZON!
3. On the contrary, federal research centers that only allow visits, with prior authorization, in special cases or PURANGA FLOW allow visits.
4. People can visit, and I insist on visits, because the law that created the reserve declares an interest in “semi-scientific” tourism based on science and committed to the community, that is, with operators and the collaboration of one or more people from the 17 communities existing in the PURANGA CONQUISTA Sustainable Development Reserve. This reserve has 76 thousand hectares (more than double that of the Montseny Natural Park) for this type of preservation and sustainability projects, which began with turtles, but which already include initiatives for other species.
5. We have a simple but essential infrastructure for visiting an entire work area with more than 20 km of trails in the jungle, which allow contact and knowledge of the BIOME, much deeper than that acquired in “typical” conventional tourism. At the same time, staying on boats, with different levels of comfort, means not destroying spaces for the construction of hotels or resorts. It’s all about CONSERVATION!
6. Our visitors are challenged to contribute a minimum of €25 per year, through a civil lease contract whose purpose is exclusively preservation, guaranteeing the conservation of a defined area. Your visit, which you can repeat whenever you want, implies participating as a member of the project, with your certificate of collaboration, becoming an effective actor in conservation. Only partners visit us. Through our website https://amzonpreservation.com you receive annual reports on the work carried out. In other words, your visit has beneficial effects after the trip.
First-year Tuareg travelers will receive this annual certificate.
Although I am suspicious because I am the owner of PURANGA FLOW, today there is already a valuable team of people involved. The project is incomparable.
As the project manager of Puranga Flow, I can guarantee that our team achieves excellent results in its tasks and that underlying our activity is the conviction that preservation is not only a responsibility of the State, it is a responsibility of all of us, to the best of our ability. And with work of this nature, integrating the State, the Amazonian communities, often forgotten and representing 30 million people, the private sector, scientific institutions and citizens of the world, who are interested in the future of our planet, this necessarily means that there is a high probability of success.