Qualla: Emas National Park

Emas National Park: Introduction

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ary Nascimento Bassous, CC BY-SA 3.0. At the end of October, when the first rains break the cerrado's long dry season, the termite mounds of Emas National Park switch on. Thousands of pinpoint green lights rise across the dark savanna, climbing the flanks of mounds that stand taller than a person, until a stretch of open grassland reads at night like a lit city skyline. The lights are not the termites. They belong to the larvae of a click beetle, Pyrearinus termitilluminans, a name that translates to something close to green fire that illuminates the termite nest. The larvae burrow into the outer crust of a mound, leave their glowing heads exposed, and wait. Winged termites swarming to mate on the first humid evenings of the wet season fly straight toward the light. Most never fly away again. The larvae are usually done by about ten at night, and the mounds go dark until the next warm, still evening.

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Image: Ary Nascimento Bassous | CC BY-SA 3.0

Emas National Park: Green Fire, and What Is Dimming It

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emilio Swany Guerreiro, CC BY-SA 4.0. Vadim Viviani of the Federal University of Sao Carlos has been bringing students to Emas for more than three decades to catalogue what glows here. His 2023 survey in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America counted 51 bioluminescent beetle species across the region, 35 ...

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Image: Emilio Swany Guerreiro | CC BY-SA 4.0

Emas National Park: The Plateau That Feeds Rivers

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danielredskin, Public domain. Emas sits on the Serra do Caiapo, a plateau that lifts from around 400 metres in its valleys to roughly 880 metres on the tablelands. Water is the reason the park matters far beyond its fences. Protected inside it are the headwaters of the Jacuba and the Formoso, both tributaries...

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Image: Danielredskin | Public domain

Emas National Park: Where the Rhea Runs

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Letícia Parmeggiani, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park takes its name from the ema, the greater rhea, a flightless bird that crosses this open country in loose grey flocks. It is good company. Roughly 85 native mammal species have been recorded here, along with 400 bird species, which amounts to nearly half of all the birds ...

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Image: Letícia Parmeggiani | CC BY-SA 4.0

Emas National Park: A Line Drawn in 1961

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emilio Swany Guerreiro, CC BY-SA 4.0. President Juscelino Kubitschek created the park by decree on 11 January 1961, in the years when Brasilia was rising a few hundred kilometres to the northeast and the interior was being opened in earnest. The boundaries were redrawn in 1972, and the reserve now covers about 1,320 ...

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Image: Emilio Swany Guerreiro | CC BY-SA 4.0

Emas National Park: Getting There

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Storni Machado, CC BY-SA 4.0. Chapadao do Ceu, about 25 kilometres from the park, is the closest town, with banking, fuel, mechanics and a pharmacy. Mineiros, 110 kilometres from the park headquarters, is the regional centre and the place to find medical care. Neither is close to anything else. The reward for...

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Image: Ian Storni Machado | CC BY-SA 4.0