United States national parks received 331.8 million visitors in 2024, according to a survey released by the US Forest Service – Rogan which, according to the New York Times, suffered under the baton of the Ensite Ellon Musk cuts of 10% of its employees, causing a general scream of threat to maintenance, preservation and management policies. Meanwhile, here in Brazil, ICMBio (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation) has just released a survey confirming that our national parks had a new record of visitation last year, with 12.5 million visits, a total 3.8% higher than the already record holder 2023.
The ICMBio survey, an agency linked to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, meets the total found by the Semeia Institute and released here on the blog, which pointed to a total visitation to the national parks in 2023 of 11.7 million. Adding the 3.8% pointed out by the official agency for last year, the numbers practically equal, confirming that Brazilians are increasingly turning to the assets of their biomes.
If not only the parks considered, but all 161 monitored conservation units (out of a total of 340 that include environmental protection areas, extractive reserves, biological reserves, national forests and natural monuments), the number found by the institute reaches 25.5 million visits in all regions of the country. This total, according to the agency, represents a 4.9% increase compared to 2023.
And if among the national parks, the zero surprise is the maintenance of the leadership in the number of visitors of the Tijuca National Park in Rio de Janeiro, in the count of all conservation units, the news is that the visitation champion is the environmental protection area of Baleia Franca, located in the south coast of Santa Catarina, and one of the main refuges of the frenters-frentered whale. There were 8.7 million those who spent there last year, according to the survey, more than the APAS of Fernando de Noronha, with 707 thousand visitors, and from the mountainous region of Petrópolis, with 657 thousand.
If the numbers are optimistic and signal a reasonable improvement, it is unquestionable that they are still far short of the potential of our biomes. And one of the problems that conservation units face and that eventually inhibit the promotion of their spaces by managers, according to an expert who has been with the activity for years, is the lack of minimally qualified labor for the management and management of protected areas.
While the above-mentioned US agency has 31,600 employees (after Musk’s scissors) to manage approximately 78 million hectares of protected areas, according to its website, the similar Brazilian has a total estimated 1,934 souls, to take care of 76.1 million hectares-or ICMBio has to take care of almost 6% of the staff.
Okay, at least we don’t have an Elon Musk.
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