Protected areas (PAs) are vital for the conservation of Brazil’s biodiversity (Barber et al. 2014 ). However, they are at risk of a downgrade in legal status due to economic pressures on natural resources (Bernard et al. 2014 ; De Marques & Perez 2014 ; Pack et...

According to some conservationists, large, pristine, uninhabited parks are the defining criterion of success in conserving tropical forests. They argue that human residents in tropical forests inevitably deplete populations of large animals through hunting, which...