Monitora Program promotes course in Descobrimento National Park

The Descobrimento National Park hosted the forest protocol course of the Biodiversity Monitoring Program - Monitora, between April 22 and the first week of May. The course was taught by a team of professionals from the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden (JBRJ), the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) and the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) and covered the monitoring of butterflies, mammals, large birds and plants.

The course was attended by 25 staff from the conservation units: the Descobrimento, Monte Pascoal and Alto Cariri National Parks, the Sooretama and Augusto Ruschi Biological Reserves, the São Francisco de Paula National Forest and the Rio Doce State Park. Five of the students belong to the Pataxó ethnic group, and will be part of the team responsible for the program at the Monte Pascoal National Historical Park.

According to Rafaela Forzza (ICMBio and JBRJ), with the implementation of the Monitora Program in the UCs of southern Bahia and northern Espírito Santo, the aim is to form the largest block of the Program in the Atlantic Forest.

The Monitora Program is the responsibility of the General Coordination for Biodiversity Research and Monitoring (CGPEQ/ICMBio), more specifically the Biodiversity Monitoring Coordination (COMOB/ICMBio). The next steps for the Monitora plant program, especially the advanced module that works on species identification, will be discussed at a meeting at the Ministry of the Environment in Brasilia on June 13-14, with the participation of researcher Claudio Nicoletti de Fraga and S&T analyst Marina Landeiro, from the JBRJ, as well as the program's entire work team.