With the end of summer and the beginning of the drier season, the attractions of Serra da Mantiqueira begin to receive a growing number of visitors. One of the most traditional routes in the region is the Itatiaia National Park, the first park created in Brazil, on the initiative of President Getúlio Vargas, on June 14, 1937. The lands, which once belonged to Irineu Evangelista de Souza, Viscount de Mauá, had been sold to the federal government in 1908 to create two colonial nuclei. The project did not work out, the land ended up in the hands of the Ministry of Agriculture, which, in 1929, created a biological station that would eventually become the PNI. In it is the Pico das Agulhas Negras, the fifth highest in the country, with 2,791 meters of altitude.
Covering the municipalities of Itatiaia and Resende, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and Bocaina and Itamonte, in Minas Gerais, the park covers an area of 28,000 hectares (280.8 square kilometers) and is easily accessible via the Presidente Dutra highway. Its visitation is divided into Lower and Upper Parts. The first, which in general requires less from the visitor, has as its main attractions the Blue Lake and the waterfalls of Complexo do Maromba, including the beautiful Véu da Noiva. But it is also in this area that the Tres Picos trail is located, classified as difficult, that is, it requires some physical preparation and more care from the visitor.
In the Upper Part of the PNI, some of the most challenging trail options are located, such as the Agulhas Negras and Prateleiras massifs and the crossings of Serra Negra, Ruy Braga, and several other slopes that are being opened by the team specialized in mountaineering, led by by Luiz Aragão, head of the park. Access to each trail is generally restricted to a maximum of 20 to 26 people per day. Specific information for each trail can be found on the website here.
The great differential of the PNI, according to Aragão, is precisely its altitude gradient, that is, the great difference in relief, which varies from 600 to 2790 meters. “This generates a wide variety of environments, unique rock formations, high altitude fields, low temperatures all year round, rare plants and animals and environments for various mountain sports,” he said in a statement.
When he talks about low temperatures, Aragon is not exaggerating. Mountaineer Jobson de Oliveira Pereira, “55 years old, 42 in the mountains”, knows well what it’s like to catch a blizzard in the middle of the state of Rio de Janeiro. One, no: two. In 1985, climbing to the top, only when he reached the top did he discover that the icy drizzle he had been feeling had turned to snowflakes.
“We had been called to help in the search for two mountaineers lost in Prateleiras, and we spent the whole night looking for them in the middle of the blizzard”, says Pereira. “Despite the hard work and the cold, they were moments that were immortalized in memory, a very different feeling, and we didn’t even have imported equipment suitable for the cold, it was school jacket and Kichute sneakers”, he recalls. Three years later, it snowed again in the upper part of the massif, “but it was a thinner snow”.
tumultuous concession
In February 2019, the administration of the park was awarded by bidding to the company Hope Human Resources. It was a ceremony full of pomp in which President Jair Bolsonaro and his then Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles, took part – yes, the same one who advised the president to take advantage of the fact that the country was only thinking about the coronavirus to pass the herd across Brazil.
However, despite the contractual forecast of investments of R$ 17 million for 25 years, until January of this year practically none of the announced improvements had been implemented. Hope filed for judicial recovery on the 31st of that month, and the company (also the subject of investigation by the Lava Jato operation) has already accumulated more than R$ 3 million in fines, as told by Sheet last January. Sought by the blog, the lawyer Camila Mattos, from the Rücker & Longo Advogados office, responsible for the recovery process, did not return the contacts until the closing of this report.
More recently, the management of the concession was transferred to the company BR Parques, which left Hope. Sought, nor returned the contacts until the publication of this text. According to market sources, it is likely that the concession will have a new administration as early as next month, with Parquetur, a company that already operates Parque Caminhos do Mar, in São Paulo.
For good and for bad
If for a certain profile of visitor the improvements promoted with privatization resources were positive, as they improved access for more people to areas that were previously difficult to travel, for scholars such as Carlos Eduardo Zikan, who was director of the PNI from 1995 to 2000, The clearing of stretches of forest to expand trails and tracks, and especially to open the park to cycling and motorcycling activities, brought an additional challenge.
“The park’s concessionaire authorized these activities in the area, but in order to do so, they had to widen parts of the forest, which scared off butterflies and birds that we can no longer see walking along the trails, as before”, says Zikan, considering that “the company that takes a concession, of course, wants to make money, and I’m not against that, but in this case they exaggerated a little bit”.
If the private initiative still hasn’t shown what it came to in the PNI, ICMBio (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade), the federal agency responsible for the park, has done its best to make the visitor’s life easier without neglecting the maintenance of the area, which was closed to the public and employees themselves for five months during the Covid-19 pandemic isolation period.
The mobilization of employees and volunteers for the recovery and care of areas affected by landslides, fires or other natural factors is visible, and the work there continues, led by Aragão, himself an experienced mountaineer.
After registering just 48,200 visitors in 2020, almost three times less than the 127,400 the previous year, the administration estimates that, by the end of 2022, the space will receive between 140,000 and 150,000 visitors. During Carnival alone (the official one, not the improvised micareta on the Tiradentes holiday), between February 26 and March 2, 4,157 people passed through the box office. In the first three months of this year, 15,139 visitors have already crossed over.
Access control to the park is strict, as are the rules that apply to its visitation. Among them, in addition to the ban on domestic animals and fires, is the requirement that visitors take away all the waste they generate, not forgetting the physical ones (alert: shit tube is mandatory for crossings!). Chemicals such as soaps, shampoos, sunscreens etc cannot be used in the waterways in the area. Alcoholic beverages do not enter the park, and silence, in the camping or accommodation areas, is mandatory between 21:00 and 07:00.
Nature, of course, will thank you.
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