A reflection on tourism in national parks in Brazil

In 2018, Brazil had 74 national parks. At that time, information on the number of national parks existed in databases and tables, but it was not organized, not even written in a sentence. At that time it was common to find outdated numbers in the news. Today there are 75 Brazilian national parks and soon there could be 76, if the creation of Albardão, in Rio Grande do Sul, is confirmed.

After visiting three national parks during our vacation in 2018, we started to research more about them and noticed that there was information, but it was decentralized. We take responsibility for organizing and publicizing the beauty and importance of national parks through an expedition. This is how Entre Parques BR was born.

After three years of preparation, the three-year expedition began on World Environment Day, June 5, 2021. So far we have visited and documented 65 national parks. In our research, we learned about ICMBio databases (the management body of federal UCs), maps, academic studies, studies by institutes and NGOs, laws, monitoring protocols, among many others.

It has already been demonstrated that in addition to conservation, national parks generate employment and income in local communities, benefits in terms of health and well-being for visitors and the surrounding population, in addition to a series of ecosystem services provided by fauna, flora and fungi.

But how will visits be distributed between national parks? Have older national parks had more time to create a tourist infrastructure and therefore receive more visits? When national parks are recognized as Natural Heritage Sites by UNESCO, they begin to receive more visits, allowing a tourist structure to be created and attracting even more visits in an orderly manner? And how can less visited parks attract visitors, enhancing their unique attractions and maintaining orderliness and quality of visitation?

In 2021, Instituto Semeia presented at Diagnosis of Public Use in Brazilian Parks: the Management perspective that “at the federal level, the average is one single employee for every 11 thousand hectares of protected area”. Considering that today ICMBio has R$0.13 to manage each hectare, how the career restructuring – for which environmental employees have been mobilized since the beginning of 2024 – can increase the benefits of conservation, employment and income, well-being and quality of life associated with conservation units?

Extrapolating the information to the Tijuca National Park, the most visited in recent years, with just under 4 thousand hectares of area, it is as if there were only the equivalent of a third of a dedicated employee there and just over R$500 per year to receive almost 4.5 million visits. Or R$111 per year for every 1 million visits.

2023 Results

At the end of March this year, the numbers of visits to Brazilian national parks in 2023 were released. The detailed numbers are available on an online platform that allows filters, historical analysis and data to be downloaded and cross-referenced.

The 2023 results indicate a record number of visits to National Parks. A milestone to be celebrated and which may demonstrate an increase in the population’s interest, as shown in the 4th edition of the study “Parques do Brasil: Population Perceptions” prepared and published by the Semeia Institute.

The number of visits to national parks reached the highest historical number in 2023: 11.8 million, a value 13.3% higher than the number of visits in 2022, the year in which the number of visits once again exceeded pre-pandemic levels .

In 2019, 9.8 million visits were recorded and in the two subsequent years the number of visits was lower, due to total or partial access restrictions. In 2023, most monitored national parks received more visits than before the pandemic.

Visitation to national parks remained concentrated in a few parks: 77% of visits occurred in 5 national parks, which correspond to 6.7% of the total. And 88% of visits occurred in 10 national parks, or 13.4% of the total.

Of the 75 national parks, 46 (61.3% of the total) received 12% of visits, while 19 national parks (25.3% of the total) received no visits, did not monitor the number of visits or did not report the numbers in 2023.

The number of visits to the Tijuca National Park, located in Rio de Janeiro, was not only the highest observed among the 75 national parks, but the growth was almost double the average.

The Tijuca National Park received the most visits in 2023, as in previous years. There were 4.46 million visits in 2023 vs 3.54 million in 2022, an increase of 26%. If compared to the number of visitors in 2019, before the pandemic, when 2.95 million visitors were registered, the growth is 51.2%.

In 2023, for the first time the number of visits to the Tijuca National Park was released by sector. Christ the Redeemer, the only paid attraction in this Conservation Unit, was responsible for 53.1% of visits to the Rio park.

The number of cyclists also began to be monitored, reaching more than 211 thousand visits. And with this opening, today we know that in the Floresta da Tijuca sector, which corresponds to 9.1% of visits to the National Park, there was an increase of 100 thousand visitors in the year, 33% more than in 2022.

The number of visits to sectors of the Tijuca National Park are comparable to other major national parks. If each of the six sectors were considered separate national parks, for analysis purposes, four would be among the ten most visited.

Today, seven national parks have active visitor support service concessions in Brazil: Aparados da Serra and Serra Geral (both between RS and SC), Chapada dos Veadeiros (GO), Iguaçu (PR), Itatiaia (RJ), Marinho de Fernando from Noronha (PE) and Tijuca (RJ).

Two national parks have the concession being implemented: Chapada dos Guimarães (MT), and Jericoacoara (CE). And one park, Pau Brasil (BA), had its concession contract terminated on 09/22/2022.

The nine national parks with concession contracts for visitation support services in active or under implementation national parks received 8.9 million visits in 2023, or 75.2% of total visits to national parks.

Brazilian national parks were created at different times and each of them has different characteristics in terms of attractions, visitation structure, access, among others. Most of the 19 parks without visitation records were created in the last 20 years. Only one is more than 50 years old: Araguaia National Park (TO). All 5 parks with more than 500 thousand visits are at least 20 years old since their creation. None of the parks that are less than 10 years old had a record of visits in 2023. And except for Araguaia National Park, all parks that are more than 50 years old had at least 10 visits per day.

There is also a focus on visiting national parks by biome. In the Atlantic Forest, where more than two thirds of the country’s population lives and where one third of the national parks are located, 68.6% of visits were recorded. In the Amazon, where 12.3% of the Brazilian population lives and where 28% of national parks are located, 0.38% of visits were recorded.

Based on information provided by the CNUC (National Register of Conservation Units) database of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, national parks with a Management Plan, Management Council, recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO or part of mosaics of Conservation Units Conservation received more visits than average in 2023.

National parks recognized as Ramsar Sites, despite not having more visits than average, stood out in 2023 for the highest average percentage increase in visits compared to 2022.

Having visited 65 of the 75 national parks since June 2021, we can attest that all national parks have the potential to welcome visitors with existing infrastructure. And that at least 13 of the 19 parks for which visitation numbers were not reported receive tourists. In the coming months, we will visit 5 more parks on this list and we will be able to confirm which ones are ready and which ones are already receiving visitors.

The lack of reported data, in our experience through conversations with servers, occurs more due to a need to improve the count than a lack of visitors. In other words, the number of visits to national parks is certainly even greater.

When we talk about national parks in a country with a continental extension and a diversity of landscapes like ours, it is important to consider that the parks are representatives of this socio-biodiversity. And the diversity of attractions and also infrastructure for visits is a strong point that should be valued.

Bringing Tijuca National Park as an example again, we can see a wide range of attractions and infrastructure to welcome visitors. Corcovado can be accessed either by train or van or on foot. Vista Chinesa is accessed by car and increasingly by bicycle. The Floresta and Pedra Bonita Sectors can be accessed by car or on foot, and the biggest attractions are the trails.

Likewise, many national parks have more man-made infrastructure, with easier access, while many others have a more rustic structure for access and overnight stays. Both can and should be valued and can be visited in an orderly manner.

At the same time that millions of tourists take a bus and travel the 11km from the Iguaçu National Park entrance to the falls, a route equipped with bathrooms, restaurants and an elevator; Hundreds or thousands of people take a flight from Mâncio Lima, in Acre, to access the Serra do Divisor National Park, where inns run by local communities allow for an extremely comfortable stay in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest.

While hundreds of thousands of people visit in flip-flops, without the need for hiking equipment, the beautiful beaches of the Serra da Bocaina National Park next to the village of Trindade, on the coast of Rio de Janeiro; almost 2 thousand people cross the border into Venezuela and walk almost 100 km to access the Brazilian side of Mount Roraima, where the national park of the same name is located, spending the night in tents under the light of the moon and stars.

Brazilians’ knowledge of national parks has been increasing, as has the number of visits. According to the Semeia Institute, this was the first year since 2018 in which “the level of total knowledge of natural parks exceeds 90% among the Brazilian population”.

If all national parks received at least 10 visits per day, we would have an additional 55 thousand visitors. This simulation would barely change the results of the total number of visits per year, but it would make a big difference for hundreds of people and families who work in the surrounding area or in activities within them.

These are people and families who are, or may be, present daily in national parks, who accompany tourists and report irregular conduct, creating a support network for management bodies whose resources are insufficient for management.

The information above shows the importance of the topic and the opportunity, not only in business, for parks to increasingly become part of the collective imagination. And with this they can also increasingly become tools that enable environmental education, in addition to their main role of conservation.