Tocantins State Parks: threats and critical activities in management

Abstract

Following the long established global effort to create protected areas, Brazil has embraced the concept of Conservation Units (UCs) as a strategy to permanently preserve large areas of restricted use by humans. The National System of Conservation Units (SNUC) came into force through the Law No. 9,985, of July 2000, which regulates the operation of current Brazilian UCs. In this context, the state of Tocantins had its State Parks created under the influence of this new model of protected areas. While there are specific laws for planning and administration of UCs, there are assessment tools to manage them, by monitoring and assessing administrative procedures. Given the current political scenario in Brazil, it is important to evaluate the results of tools that have already been tested and validated. Thus, this research aimed to analyze the factors that influenced operations, threats and activities critical to the management of the Cantão State Park (PEC), Jalapão State Park (PEJ) and Lajeado State Park (PEL), from 2009 to 2018, through data collected in the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT). The results made it possible to identify the main threats and critical activities for the management of these UCs, with PEC being the best rated in the general average with the Good concept, followed by PEJ and PEL respectively, which obtained the Regular concept. There were observed threats such as hunting, fishing, irregular visitation, lack of land regularization and fires. On top of that, critical activities such as low number of park rangers to monitor activities, together with the minimum number of higher education professionals in specific areas and labor turnover, were part of the daily life of the UCs, affecting their full operation due to the non-resolution of the issues pointed out by the managers.