Protected Areas

(43,866 km2), extremely high biologicalimportance was attributed.The priority action that was mostfrequently proposed was biologicalinventories (56% of the areas). Thispoints to the fact that despite expressivevolumes of scientific knowledge havingbeen produced on the biodiversity inthe Pantanal, there is still the need forinvestments to be made to researchon biodiversity, as well as socialanthropologicstudies in the region.There is an urgent need for the numberof protected area sites in the Pantanalto be increased due to the advance ofplanted pastures in the region and thelow number of existing protected areasites. The situation is even more seriousif we take into account the inexistenceof sustainable-use protected areas in thebiome.2.25% of the biome’s territory is legallyprotected by protected area sites, all ofwhich are full-protection sites. Of thistotal, 0.99% is of federal protected areasites and 1.26% are state sites.In the Ministry of the Environment,measures for biodiversity conservationin the Pantanal biome are coordinatedby the Secretariat for Biodiversity andForests (SBF/MMA), which understandsthe conservation of this unique andfragile biome to be a priority. For this,it has been making efforts to createmore protected area sites in additionto implementing a periodically updatedsystem for monitoring Pantanal’svegetation coverage.Access “Vegetation Coverage” and “PriorityAreas for Conservation and Sustainable Use”maps of the Pantanal biome at www.mma.gov.br/portalbio35