History of Parque Nacional do Iguacu

The Iguaçú National Park is spectacular as well as pioneering. The first proposal for a Brazilian national park aimed at providing a pristine environment to "future generations", just as "it had been created by God" and endowed with "all possible preservation, from the beautiful to the sublime, from the picturesque to the awesome" and "an unmatched flora" located in the "magnificent Iguaçú waterfalls". These were the words used by André Rebouças, an engineer, in his book "Provinces of Paraná, Railways to Mato Grosso and Bolivia", which started up the campaign aimed at preserving the Iguaçú Falls way back in 1876, when Yellowstone National Park, the first national park on the planet, was four years old.

On November 17, 1986, during the UNESCO conference held in Paris, the Iguaçú National Park was listed as Natural Heritage of Humanity and is one of the largest forest preservation areas in South America