The Chapada do Araripe, in northeastern Brazil, is one of the country's most important regions for biodiversity, water resources, geological heritage, and paleontology. Its Early Cretaceous deposits, particularly the Crato and Romualdo formations, preserve an internationally significant fossil record that has transformed our understanding of ancient ecosystems and the evolution of vertebrates, including one of the world's most remarkable records of pterosaurs.

A recently approved Management Plan for the Chapada do Araripe Environmental Protection Area (APA) has raised serious concerns because 89.86% of the protected area has reportedly been designated as a Production Zone, where agricultural, livestock, forestry, aquaculture, and other economic activities may be permitted under environmental regulations.

We believe that assigning such an overwhelming proportion of a protected area to productive use represents a major conservation concern and deserves urgent public and scientific scrutiny.

The concern is not limited to already known fossil sites. Large portions of the Araripe Basin remain scientifically underexplored, meaning that potentially important fossiliferous exposures may still await discovery. Changes in land use, earthworks, intensive agriculture, infrastructure development, erosion, and other alterations of the landscape can damage geological exposures before their scientific importance is even recognized.

This is especially important because paleontological heritage is non-renewable. Once the geological context of a fossil locality is destroyed, the scientific information contained within that site cannot simply be recreated.

The issue is equally important for biodiversity and water conservation. Brazilian federal environmental planning documents have already identified agricultural expansion in the Chapada do Araripe as a potential future threat capable of significantly affecting regional vegetation cover.

This petition does not oppose local communities, traditional livelihoods, or sustainable agriculture. The Chapada do Araripe has long been inhabited and used economically, and an Environmental Protection Area is legally a sustainable-use conservation unit rather than a strictly protected reserve.

Instead, we are asking for a more precautionary balance between economic use and the protection of an irreplaceable natural and scientific heritage.

We call upon the relevant Brazilian environmental authorities to:

1. reassess whether the current zoning provides adequate protection for the Chapada do Araripe's biodiversity, water resources, geological formations, and paleontological heritage;
2. identify and map areas of high paleontological and geological sensitivity throughout the APA, including areas where important fossil sites may remain undiscovered;
3. establish stronger safeguards for known and potential fossiliferous localities;
4. require appropriate paleontological assessment before activities involving substantial ground disturbance are authorized in sensitive geological areas;
5. strengthen environmental monitoring, enforcement, and scientific participation in future land-use decisions; and
6. ensure that researchers, universities, museums, local communities, conservation organizations, and other stakeholders have meaningful opportunities to participate in decisions affecting the future of the Chapada do Araripe.

Protecting the Chapada do Araripe is not an obstacle to development. It is an investment in science, biodiversity, water security, education, sustainable tourism, and the heritage of future generations.

The fossils and geological landscapes of the Araripe Basin document a chapter of Earth's history more than 100 million years old. Once destroyed, that record is lost forever.

We therefore call for stronger protection of the Chapada do Araripe and for a review of land-use policies that could place its unique environmental, geological, and paleontological heritage at risk.

Protect the Chapada do Araripe. Protect its fossils. Protect its biodiversity. Protect its future.