The Iguaçu Falls, the largest in the world, sit on the border between Brazil and Argentina and are protected by national parks in both countries. Located in Brazil’s Paraná state, Iguaçu National Park spans 185,000 hectares (457,000 acres), has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is what’s known locally as an integral protection conservation unit — created to preserve one of the most significant remnants of the Atlantic Forest. Hunting, fishing and other forms of natural resource exploitation are banned in areas with this preservation status.
Nevertheless, between 2009 and 2019, environmental authorities issued more than 1,300 notices for a range of violations in the park, including poaching of wildlife and harvesting of palm hearts from a threatened native palm tree, juçara (Euterpe edulis).
Experts say these crimes could increase if either one of two bills — known as bills 7123/2010 and 984/2019 — currently being deliberated in the lower house of Congress is approved. The latter was introduced by Nelsi Coguetto Maria, a congressman popularly known as Vermelho, and openly backed by President Jair Bolsonaro.
Both bills call for reopening the Estrada do Colono (Settlers’ Road), which cuts through Iguaçu National Park from north to south, to create a new type of conservation unit in Brazil: a parkway. The road has been closed since 2001 by order of the country’s Superior Court of Justice.
Since its closure, the road has been almost entirely reclaimed by the vegetation, and reopening it remains a contentious issue in the region. Environmental organizations oppose it, warning of the impact that an influx of vehicle traffic and people will have on the park’s jaguar (Panthera onca) population, the only one that’s on the rise in the Atlantic Forest.