Qualla: Araguaia State Park

Araguaia State Park: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Victor Henrique Gomes ferreira, CC BY-SA 4.0. Once a year this park stops being land. The rains come, the Araguaia and the Rio das Mortes rise past their banks, and 223,169 hectares of savanna and forest go under shallow water that stands for months. Marsh deer wade where cattle would drown. River dolphins push into flooded woodland that was dry ground in August. Then the water pulls back, the grass returns, and the whole cycle resets. Araguaia State Park protects one of the last large stretches of eastern Mato Grosso where that rhythm still runs uninterrupted.

Read more: Araguaia State Park on Qualla

Image: Victor Henrique Gomes ferreira | CC BY-SA 4.0

Araguaia State Park: The Seam Between Two Worlds

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Biomes do not stop at a line; they overlap, and the overlap is usually the richest ground. This park sits in the transition between the Amazon rainforest and the cerrado, Brazil's vast tropical savanna, and it collects species from both. Robust capuchins and howler monkeys work t...

Read more: Araguaia State Park on Qualla

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Araguaia State Park: Between the Araguaia and the River of Deaths

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilson Heinzl, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park lies in the municipality of Novo Santo Antônio, hard against the borders of São Félix do Araguaia, Ribeirão Cascalheira and the state of Tocantins. It occupies the wedge between the Araguaia and its tributary the Rio das Mortes — the River of Deaths, a name given by colo...

Read more: Araguaia State Park on Qualla

Image: Nilson Heinzl | CC BY-SA 4.0

Araguaia State Park: Which Land Gets Saved

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodolforoca, CC BY-SA 3.0. Protection in Mato Grosso has never been evenly distributed, and the numbers say why. Since the 1970s, driven by federal and state tax incentives, enormous areas of Amazon forest and cerrado in this state have been converted to large-scale ranching and cropping. What survived was...

Read more: Araguaia State Park on Qualla

Image: Rodolforoca | CC BY-SA 3.0

Araguaia State Park: Paper and Promises

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodolforoca, CC BY-SA 3.0. Mato Grosso created the park by state law 7.517 on 28 September 2001, setting aside around 230,000 hectares to protect water resources, keep corridors open for native fauna, preserve a representative sample of the region's ecosystems, and allow controlled public use, education an...

Read more: Araguaia State Park on Qualla

Image: Rodolforoca | CC BY-SA 3.0

Araguaia State Park: The Exchange That Was Refused

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Milenafelly, CC BY-SA 4.0. In June 2011 the state government published a law proposing an unusual swap. It would have moved the Xavante of the Marãiwatsédé Indigenous Territory into the state park, and in exchange regularised the holdings of the squatters occupying their land. The Xavante had been forced o...

Read more: Araguaia State Park on Qualla

Image: Milenafelly | CC BY-SA 4.0