Jaú

Jaú National Park was created in 1980 in the state of Amazonas, north of Manaus, and at more than 22,000 km² is one of the largest rainforest parks on the planet. Its distinctive feature is that it protects practically the complete basin of one river, the Jaú, from its headwaters to its mouth on the Rio Negro, which makes it possible to conserve a whole hydrological system rather than a fragment.

The Jaú is a blackwater river, dark and acid from its load of decomposing organic matter and poor in nutrients and sediment. That kind of water generates ecosystems of its own: the igapós, forests seasonally flooded for months at a time, with trees adapted to remaining submerged, and a specialised aquatic fauna. The scarcity of nutrients also explains the low density of mosquitoes compared with whitewater rivers.

The park is home to the boto and the tucuxi, the Amazonian manatee, the giant otter, the black caiman, the jaguar and a bird and fish fauna of enormous richness, much of it still poorly known. In 2000 UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List as the core of the Central Amazon Conservation Complex, which in 2003 was extended to take in the Mamirauá and Amanã Sustainable Development Reserves and Anavilhanas National Park, forming one of the most extensive protected rainforest complexes in the world.