According to the Forestry Code of 1965, it is mandatory that every rural estate destine part of its land to the establishment of Reservas Legais. When a diagnosis is made all over Brazil, such reality is quite different from what is demanded by law. There are scarce Reservas Legais in the rural area, and it is even more difficult to find a rural unity that has its reservation registered in a notary office. Part of the responsibility is attributed to the Brazilian government which, besides not stimulating the establishment of reservations, do not make available to the rural estate owner models to allocate reservations and where technical-scientific subsidies - decision-making facilitators - are grouped. Therefore, this work has as a general objective to propose ways of establishing Reservas Legais based on the analysis of the environmental deterioration in a river basin, and since it aims at the conservation of natural resources and the sustainable development of the region. For this purpose, a study on the experimental river basin of Rio Claro, which separates the counties São Manuel and Pratânia, São Paulo State, was carried out. Environmental deterioration was detected based on three diagnoses: physicalconservationist, socioeconomic, and environmental quality. This way, from a quantitative and qualitative diagnosis, it was possible to identify the main aggressive factors to the river basin studied and to indicate the main vulnerabilities the area is subjected. According to such diagnoses, some proposals for the establishment of Reservas Legais are discussed here based on papers aimed at the conservation of water resources, soil and biodiversity. Hopes are that from this study the environment receives a new tool for diagnosis, population control, recovery and conservation of natural resources.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Pós-graduação em Agronomia (Energia na Agricultura) - FCA

Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)