The word Tumucumaque

New Scientist vol 177 issue 2382 - 15 February 2003, page 45

BRAZILIAN president Fernando Henrique Cardoso created a stir last August when he announced the creation of Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, forged out of the Amazon rainforest in Amapá State in north-east Brazil.

The reserve, created jointly by government and environmental groups such as WWF and Conservation International, became the world's largest tropical national park. It took the title easily, covering 39,000 kilometres - an area larger than Belgium and more than 6 per cent bigger than the former number one, Salonga National Park in Africa. Brazil's government has promised to protect 10 per cent of the Amazon's forests, and Tumucumaque alone accounts for 1 per cent of the total.

Now the park has created a new wave of interest, after the Amazon Conservation Team unveiled the Tumucumaque map at the Brazilian embassy in Washington DC last month.

Why all the fuss about a map - with such a big park, surely you'd need one? Yes, but this map is special. For starters, it could transform prospects for conserving rainforests worldwide. What's more, the intriguing way it was made brings together indigenous societies, government, environment groups - and state-of-the-art telecommunications technology.

Cartographers trained members of the rainforest tribes living locally - the Tirió, Kaxuyana, Wayana and Apalai - to use Global Positioning System handsets to collect data. Using this, aerial photos and the tribes' knowledge of the area, the team worked for a year to compile the most detailed indigenous map ever of an Amazonian region.

So what does it look like? The final product includes important features such as the headwaters of several major rivers, the location of game species, fish spawning grounds and villages. Interestingly, the Tumucumaque map also reflects indigenous ways of thinking by working in six "dimensions": latitude, longitude, altitude, time (ancient village and battle sites), sacred sites, and mythological sites, where invisible creatures make the area a no-go zone. Not featured - sensibly from the tribes' viewpoint - are locations of coveted medicinal plants.

Before the map there were only maps based on satellite photos showing little more than rivers and mountains. Now the region's ecology should be a lot easier to protect since the information is local. And how will such maps help the Amazon's unique species? Well, those in serious decline such as the jaguar, giant anteater, harpy eagle and black spider monkey stand a better chance of survival. And there's plenty more to discover. Hundreds of thousands of species could lurk in the dense rainforest.

You may even get to see some of the magnificence - eventually. But although eco-Reals are an attractive prospect for Brazil, right now the scientists and indigenous peoples take priority.