The potential effects of the Brazilian Forest Code on the fish and fisheries in the Amazon

• Grant number: 24/10153-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: March 03, 2025
• End date: September 02, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Gislene Torrente Vilara
• Grantee: Gislene Torrente Vilara
• Host Investigator: Thierry Oberdorff
• Host Institution: Instituto do Mar (IMar). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Baixada Santista. Santos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Centre De Recherche Sur La Biodiversité Et L'Environnement, Toulouse, France

Abstract

In Brazil, the protection of biodiversity (including fishes) and ecosystems services are regulated by the Conservation Units federal law #9985 (National System of Conservation Units - SNUC in Portuguese, 18 July 2000). Protected areas (including integral protection areas, sustainable use reserves and indigenous territories) cover about 43% of the Brazilian Amazon. However, there is not a proper law to protect the aquatic ecosystems outside the officially protected areas, which puts large floodplain areas and its biodiversity in threat. The riparian zones of rivers and streams with some degree of past or present human occupancy are formally protected by the Article #3 of Brazil`s federal law no 12.651 (Lei de Proteção da Vegetação Nativa-LPVN, 2012, also known as Forest Code, Código Florestal in Potuguese). That law establishes rules to protect the riparian zone of lotic and lentic systems, which are treated as "Permanent Protection Areas" (APPs, in Portuguese). Thus, in practice and by law, the APPs protection regime describes how (or the amount of) the riparian zones of streams, rivers and wetlands in general should be protected. Considering the law, the widest APP should be of 500 meters along a large river, and of 100 m for lakes. In man-made reservoirs, regardless of its size, the APP would range between 30 and 100m for rural zones, and between 15 and 30 meters in urban zones. Besides, the LPVN size categories for rivers do not adequately contemplate the size magnitude of the rivers of the Amazon basin (e.g. the Rio Negro with a width at its mouth estimated at up to 8 km during the flood period). Moreover, none of the APP width categories adopted by the law is supported by explicit ecological analyzes or scientific results, and there is no formal definition of "riparian forests" and "regular river bed". The aim of this project is to analyze the effects of the LPVN definitions for APPs (APP width by river width classes) on the fish diversity (species richness) fish abundance (measured by results of Catch Per Unit of Effort - CPUE - and focusing on fish species that directly depend on the floodplain forest resources to feed), and fisheries yield in the Amazon. The results will represent a scientific argument to support a discussion about the need to outfit (adjust) the LPVN to the size of the Amazon basins, and in other Brazilian states that are home to large floodplain rivers.