Biodiversity

 

In the more remote areas of the Reserve there has been little or no intervention by humans. The Reserve is close the Costa do Cacao, an area in which cocoa, sometimes called white gold, has been produced since 1752. The Janaina Natural Reserve is part of the region of  Rio de Contas. This region has a media of 454 different species of trees per hectare. This surpasses the 300 different species of tree found in the Peruvian Amazon, giving the area the world record for tree biodiversity. The Reserve also has 18 sources of mineral water and is crossed by the Rio Pinheiro. 

  

In 2007 Prof. André M. Amorim, world-renowned botanist and coordinator for research at the New York Botanical Garden, said, after research on the region, that the Janaina Natural Reserve  is a priority for conservation of the Atlantic Forest bioma. During the research a new species of Bromelia was found as was a population of Physeterostemon Jardim (Melastomataceae), which is only the third knownabout in Brazil. Moreover, the presence of Lophophytum mirabilis (from the Balanophoraceae family) a rare grass, indicates that there has been suffered little or no human intervention in the area. Also  in the Reserve there are many noble tree species such as: gindiba (Sloanea sp. - Elaeocarpaceae), Figueira (Ficus sp. - Moraceae), maçaranduba (Manilkara sp. - SAPOTACEAE) and ipe-amarelo ( Tabebuia sp. - Bignoniaceae).