SusTravel.co.uk

Simao Jatene, governor of the Brazilian state of Para, made seven new protected areas in Amazonia late last year. From the border of Guyana and Suriname in the north to areas south of the Amazon River, they cover a stunning 37 million acres.

"I cannot remember any single announcement like this," says Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, vice president of science for Conservation International (CI) Brazil. "This is one of the major conservation announcements of the last decades."

Two of the seven new areas are designated as strictly protected areas, and one is the world's largest strictly protected area ever created in a tropical forest. According to CI's Amazonia program manager Enrico Bernard, these two areas alone could be home to as many as 54 percent of all animal and plant species found in Amazonia. The other areas will allow sustainable use and limited production.

The region now possesses a network of connected protected areas, a biodiversity conservation corridor that allows species to roam vast landscapes, intermingle, strengthen their gene pool, and thereby increase their chances for long-term survival.

On top of that, about 20 percent of the world's water runs through the region. The protected areas are on the Guayana Shield, a massive rock formation with the most significant freshwater reserves in the American tropics.

"If any tropical rain forest on Earth remains intact a century from now, it will be in this portion of northern Amazonia, thanks in part to Governor Jatene's visionary commitment," says CI President Russell A. Mittermeier.

CI-Brazil will now help the state of Para implement these new protected areas and keep Jatene's commitments alive. From what we can see, the governor retired last year: but what a retirement gift to the world!

Meanwhile, if you’re thinking of heading out that way yourself, there’s a new web-based source of sustainable tourism info. The Eco-Index of Sustainable Tourism was created by the Rainforest Alliance's Sustainable Tourism programme, and is in both English and Spanish. It now includes more than 100 listings in 12 countries, mainly in Central America. To be included, an establishment must either be certified by an ecotourism certification program or recommended by a conservation organisation that verifies its use of sustainable practices like more efficient water and energy use, wildlife conservation and waste management.

It is part of the Rainforest Alliance’s Eco-Index, http://www.eco-index.org , a database of nearly 900 conservation projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Rainforest Alliance also helped to create the Sustainable Tourism Network of the Americas, which includes organizations from 23 countries in Latin America.