Fishing in Serra do Divisor National Park

Serra do Divisor sits at the far western edge of Brazil, where Acre state presses against the Peruvian border.

The park covers roughly 8,463 km² of terrain that is unlike most of the Amazon basin — a chain of hills and peaks rising to around 600 meters, cut through by rivers that drain toward the Juruá watershed.

The lowland margins of the main rivers flood regularly, creating a mosaic of lakes, igapós, and igarapés alongside the faster upland channels. Access is by boat, primarily along the Rio Moa or Rio Juruá from Cruzeiro do Sul.

There is no tourism infrastructure inside the park. The Rio Moa and Rio Juruá are the two waters that anchor the fishing here.

Both wind through the park's lower sections, where seasonally inundated floodplains hold the kind of habitat that concentrates fish during and after high water.

The park shelters the headwaters of several left-bank tributaries of the Juruá, including the Rio Juruá-Mirim and the Rio Branco, along with smaller igarapés — Chifre da Vaca, Preto, Cujubim, José Grande, Boa Vista, República, Ramon, and Ipu — that drain the hill massifs into the main channels.

Scientific surveys of the park's ichthyofauna have recorded approximately 50 species from subsistence fishing alone, with Characiformes and Siluriformes — the orders that include the region's most sought-after table fish — accounting for the majority of documented diversity.

The park is managed by ICMBio, Brazil's federal conservation agency. Before planning any fishing trip here, contact ICMBio directly for current entry requirements, permitted activities, and any conditions that apply to fishing within the park boundary.

Rules in a unit this remote and ecologically sensitive can differ significantly from general state licensing requirements. Getting here takes real commitment.

The river journey from Cruzeiro do Sul is the standard approach, and the park's interior igarapés are only reachable by small boat or on foot. The same remoteness that makes logistics difficult is what keeps the fishery intact.