The Cairuçu Environmental Protection Area (APA) was created to help assure the protection of the natural environment and its sustainable use by the caiçara communities in the region. This work presents an ethnobotanical inventory of the plants known and used by the caiçara community living on Martim de Sá beach in Paraty municipality, RJ. Thirty people live in the locality and ten of them were interviewed. Ethnobotanical information was obtained through participatory observations and semi-structured interviews with the local residents. All botanical material collected was deposited in the herbarium of the Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro (RB). A total of 76 species belonging to 59 genera and 30 botanical families that are considered useful by the caiçaras were identified. The three species most cited were Sloanea obtusifolia ("sapopema"), Scherolobium denudatum ("ingá-ferro"), and Balizia pedicelaris ("timbuíba"). The Shannon Index was used to analyze species diversity (H' = 1.81) and indicated that the caiçaras have a very intimate knowledge of local biodiversity when compared to studies carried out in other localities along the southeastern Brazilian coast having similar floristic composition. The inventory of the plant resources used by this community and their knowledge of the local natural environment will be useful in future conservation programs in the region.
Atlantic Forest; caiçara knowledge; ethnobotany; nature conservation; useful plants
