Urban centers were built along the railway and intensive logging began, followed by farming of coffee, cotton, peanuts and cattle.

[2] The governor of São Paulo state in the early 1940s, Fernando Costa, created three reserves to protect public land in the region.

[3] Over the years that followed the Lagoa São Paulo and Great Pontal reserves continued to be invaded by squatters and deforested, often with government support.

[1] Jânio Quadros came to power in 1955 and took a series of measures to protect the Lagoa São Paulo and Great Pontal reserves, which still had much of their forest cover intact.

His successors were not interested in conservation, and in his second term Adhemar de Barros repealed the decrees published by Jânio Quadros, apart from one that had created the Morro do Diabo State Park.

The forests would be used to create new conservation units linked through corridors to the Morro do Diabo State Park, and surrounded by agroforestry buffer zones.

[12] Low fertility of the soil and distance from natural markets has meant that only cattle and sugarcane are profitable, and the region is the poorest in the state of São Paulo.