One of the most coveted destinations to stamp the resume of Brazilian mountaineers, the Serra Fina crossing, in the Mantiqueira range, is closed to the public until April 1st of next year. The decision to interrupt access was taken by the APSF (Association of Owners of Serra Fina), which brings together the owners of land that give access to the trails, and has the declared objective of guaranteeing the recovery of the local vegetation and implementing improvements identified as necessary in the last season. Not least, it aims to avoid accidents during the rainy season.
“In this year’s season, which began last June and ended on September 30, we had 1,857 visitors and 194 guides touring Serra Fina”, says José Sávio Monteiro, vice-president of APSF and manager of RPPN (Reserva Particular do Patrimônio Natural) Pedra da Mina, gateway to the trail. “And there was never once a need to call for rescue,” he adds.
The highlight is not for nothing. The demand for the crossing and, in particular, for Pedra da Mina, intensified after the officialization, in 2000, of its status as the fourth highest mountain in the country, with 2,798 meters of altitude. “Since then, the number of mountaineers has increased geometrically”, says Monteiro. In 2010, around 500 people visited Pedra da Mina and signed the summit book. In 2019, there were already 3,000 – with a total of 19 rescue actions.
“This was an unregulated and disorganized volume of people who concentrated mainly on weekends and holidays, which ended up causing many in the camping areas to devastate more forest to shelter more tents”, he explains.
Among the recorded exaggerations, Monteiro remembers the Corpus Christi holiday in 2019, when 500 people signed the summit book at Pedra da Mina. “The ideal survey, carried out with the support of specialists and the ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation), indicated that the maximum camping capacity for access to Pedra da Mina is 15 tents of up to 2 people each”, he quotes . This was, therefore, the authorization limit established by the association last season, the first in which the entity was able to charge admission and establish fixed access rules to the region for each type and value of contracted voucher.
The restrictions and charging for access even generated criticism from some mountaineers and guides, but Monteiro minimizes these reactions by explaining that local guides and athletes from the region who train in the mountain have free access released upon prior registration, and that the measures are practiced in great trails from around the world. In addition, by practicing lower values for access on weekdays, the number of visitors was diluted, attracting groups to periods when, before, they were less sought after.
The control and collection of access to Serra Fina ended up being boosted by the fire that devastated more than 500 hectares in July 2020 and which, according to the investigations carried out, would have been caused by a badly extinguished bonfire in a camp. Closed since that month for the recovery of the ecosystem, the region ended up benefiting from social isolation measures and got two years off, free of visitors.
“The idea of creating an association to protect Serra Fina began to be conceived in 2001, because the entrances and exits are all in private areas”, says Monteiro. But it was only with the post-fire hiatus that the entity moved from planning to reality, after several options had been evaluated over the years that failed to become viable, such as the creation of a national park.
For the president of the ASPF, José Antonio Cintra, who controls the exit of the trail in the RPPN Nativa Serra Fina less than 50 meters from the door of his house, the control of the number and profile of the visitors has been fundamental for what he considers to be the main objective of the entity: the preservation of the region. “The work we do here is being considered an example of PPP (Public-Private Partnership) because this area of environmental protection was the least protected, and in the current model it allows its sustainable use”, he explains.
The work of managing the region and signaling the trails, with the Transmantiqueira logo, according to Cintra, was all paid for by the associates with their own resources, help from “crowds” and volunteers. In order to maintain the management work and implement improvements in the future, the entity counts on the collection of entrance fees.
“We need to have resources to enable the new services that were suggested by mountaineers, guides, firefighters, etc”, he explains. Among the improvements installed on his property, he cites the biodigester for unloading visitors’ shit tubes, a mandatory item for crossings. And, for the next season, QR Code signs are planned, suggested by the Minas Gerais and São Paulo firefighters, which will guide visitors in the areas of greater risk and which, if necessary, will pass on to the rescue teams the exact location of the plaintiffs. With the aim of guiding mountaineers, the installation of meteorological stations is also planned to monitor the weather in the region.
“Of course, not everything was perfect, but it was just the first year, everything was new, the desire to make a difference”, says Cintra, adding that “it is necessary to evolve so that problems do not recur”.
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