The Serra Ricardo Franco is a line of heavily eroded
sand stone hills and mesetas running in a roughly North
West line that Parallels the Rio Guapore from 10
km West of the Town of Vila Bela for a distance
of approximately 70 km. The hills cross the Bolivian
border (there they are known as the Serrania Huanchaca and
are part of the Noel Kempff Mercado National park). The
Rio Verde which separates the ern line of hills
from the main massif forms the Brazil Bolivian border up
to its confluence with the Guapore. The far South-Eastern
part of the Serra is an ecological reserve.
The vegetation of the Serra comprises dry wooded cerrado
on the plateaux with tropical moist forest and savannah
grassland (some of it seasonally inundated) on the low lying
areas. The tropical forest has been cleared to some extent
in recent years and burned for cattle pasture. To our knowledge,
the high land and the relatively inaccessible region of
the Rio Verde remain pristine. Wildlife includes
both forest and plains species such as jaguars, maned
wolves, rheas (South American ostrich) , spider
and black howler monkeys. In the Rio Guapore, Boto
pink river dolphins are regularly encountered.
