The demographic growth of Manaus, mainly since mid-twentieth century, has pressured the occupation of new spaces with the use, exploration, discharacterization, spalling and sub-spalling of the landscape and, in some cases, its very destruction. Involvement and participation by communities of surrounding and protecting areas are basic to any model or plan of management. With the objective of identifying and evaluating the degree of participation by the local population, in the context of protecting these areas, we adopted exploratory inquiry procedures through qualitative and quantitative intermediary research to take in the social and natural areas. In regions close to five situated units of conservation in strategical places and of distinct management categories, our interpretation was archived using techniques of environmental perception and social representation. It can be inferred from the results that the levels of participation by social representation reflect the existing conflicts between man and nature. This is influenced strongly by formal education, age, social stratification and environmental perception of the subjects of this research. The current scenarios, legislative trend of natural or modified landscapes, or even those not in our study area, when observed and analyzed from an investigative perspective, reflect these various relationships in nature that are occurring in a dynamic way and with high degree of intensity and speed, and translate into violent fragmentation of natural ecosystems by human action.
protected areas; environmental conservation; social representation
