Setting aside a swath of Amazon rainforest bigger than Belgium, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed a decree Thursday creating the world's largest tropical national park.
The Tumucumaque Mountains National Park covers a virtually uninhabited region of virgin rainforest in Amapa state, along Brazil's northern borders with Suriname and Guyana.
"With the creation of Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, we are ensuring the protection of one of the most pristine forests remaining in the world," Cardoso said in a statement. "Plants and animals that may be endangered elsewhere will continue to thrive in our forests forever."
Deforestation has destroyed about 15 percent of Brazil's Amazon rainforest, which today covers about 3.5 million km2. Roads have accelerated destruction of the forest by providing access for settlers, prospectors and loggers.
The new park is some 230,000 hectares larger that the Slonga National Park in Congo, until now the world's largest protected tropical reserve.
The presidential decree came four days before the opening of the Johannesburg Earth Summit. At the summit, he is expected to announce the Amazon Region Protected Areas program, which will put nearly 500,000km2, including Tumucumaque, under federal protection.
Cardoso also signed a series of measures regulating the use of genetic material gathered from Brazil's immense variety of plant and animal species.
Tumucumaque, which means "the rock on top of the mountain," in the language of the Apalai and Wayana Indians, is 3.8 million hectares of forest-blanketed mountains with occasional outcroppings of granite rising as high 700m above the wooded canopy.
Jaguars, sloths, giant armadillos, anteaters and harpy owls inhabit the forest, and scientists know of at least eight species of primates, 350 of birds and 37 types of lizard there.
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