Lacunas de conservação de primatas na Amazônia brasileira

Abstract

Fragmentation and habitat loss threaten primate species, even in protected areas, all over the globe. In the most primate rich biome, the Brazilian Amazonia, there are currently 16 primates threatened by extinction. We measured how much suitable area these primates are losing due to deforestation, and the potential protection that Conservation Units (Brazilian official Protected Areas- PAs) and Indigenous Lands (ILs) may provide. We built distribution models and calculated established three distribution measures; the potential (the raw model), the real (potential – current deforested area), and the future (real – expected area to be deforested) distributions. We made a gap analysis overlapping these distributions with PAs and ILs in three scenarios; (1) Integral Protection Units (IPs) only; (2) IPs + Sustainable Use Units (SUs); and (3) IPs + SUs + ILs. We calculated the minimum primate area that should be overlapped with potential protected areas so species would be considered conserved (conservation goals) and tested each primate goal`s achievement in every scenario. Two primates do not reach their goals in scenario 3. However regarding real and future distributions, SUs increases the achieved goals by IPs in more than 120% in average. ILs increases the achieved goals by Pas in more than 75%. We conclude that SUs and ILs alone would be potentially better protection areas than IPs (which were designed specifically fore conservation purposes), and that including ILs in the official protected areas of Brazil would be a great advance on Amazonian threatened species conservation.