Iguaçu

Iguaçu National Park was created in 1939 in the west of the state of Paraná, on the border with Argentina, and is one of the oldest national parks in Brazil. It protects some 1,850 km², the largest continuous remnant of interior Atlantic forest, or semi-deciduous Atlantic forest, left in the country, a biome reduced to a minimal fraction of its original extent.

Its most celebrated feature is the Iguazú Falls, where the river of the same name plunges in an arc of almost three kilometres formed by more than 250 cataracts of up to 80 metres, shortly before its confluence with the Paraná. The Devil's Throat, the main fall, marks the border between the two countries. The Brazilian side offers the panoramic view of the whole and the Argentine side the walk among the falls; the two national parks, Brazilian and Argentine, are inscribed separately on the World Heritage List, the Argentine one in 1984 and the Brazilian one in 1986.

Beyond the falls, the park preserves a very high biodiversity and is one of the few places where jaguar populations survive in southern Brazil, alongside tapir, peccary, ocelot and an abundant birdlife that includes the great dusky swift, which nests behind the curtains of water. The main management challenge is the pressure of tourist numbers in the millions concentrated on a very small sector of the park, together with poaching and the isolation of the forest from other remnants.