"We are looking at an enormous area being protected in this state. This sort of thing was unheard of 10 years ago," Russell Mittermeier, the head of US-based Conservation International (CI), which is involved in protecting the earth's environmental treasures, told reporters in the eastern port city of Durban.

The announcement was made at the fifth WPC, hosted by the World Conservation Union and attended by 2,500 experts from across the globe who are discussing how to safeguard the earth's 100,000 environmentally protected areas.

Delegates at the 10-day congress that started Monday are also considering how communities living in protected sites can benefit from these areas.

Amazonas Secretary of Sustainable Development and Environment Virgilio Viana said that with the creation of the new areas in Brazil, the sparsely populated Amazonas now had 63 million hectares (150 lillion acres) of protected areas. That is 40 percent of its surface and a greater land surface than the entire island of Madagascar.

Viana said the new reserves were rich in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, including six types of vegetation, dense forests and seasonally flooded wetlands.

The region holds 450 bird species, 180 mammals and dozens of turtle, lizard and amphibian species.

The Amazonia region accounts for more than half of the world's remaining tropical rainforests, and more than 70 percent of the tropical rainforest wilderness areas.

Its largest new protected area, the Cujubim Sustainable Development Reserve, in the southwestern part of the state, is named after the Cujubim bird, under threat by hunting and deforestation.

The reserve is also home to some 250 villagers who live in abject poverty on the banks of the Jutai River, Viana said.

"We are reorganising our infrastructure, training municipal leaders to manage sustainable development projects that will allow the executive branch to work hand-in-hand with local communities to manage and run protected areas.

"International partnerships and financing are vital to guarantee that these areas are efficiently protected and to increase the life of the communities that live inside these reserves," Viana said.

TERRA.WIRE