The communities are ethnically diverse, including Cocama, Baniwa, Tucano, Ticuna, Mura, Baré, Sateré-Mawé and Carapana people.

[2] A delegation from the Jaraqui riverine community met councillor Sinésio Campos in the second half of 1997 asking if he could change the state park into a sustainable development reserve so they would be able to improve their land and implement economic projects.

The legal conflict prevented implementation of infrastructure and public services in the communities and restricted agriculture and extractive activities despite their being sustainable in nature.

Lengthy negotiations followed with the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform), Programa Terra Legal (Federal land title granting agency), Superintendência da Zona Franca de Manaus (owner of the land around the reserve), the navy (which occupies an area on the right bank of the Cuieiras River) and Fundação Nacional do Índio (National Indian Foundation – FUNAI).

Creation of the RDS was hailed as a great victory for the indigenous Baré and Kambeba people and the riverine communities who had lived in the area for more than twenty years before the state park was created.

[1] Objectives were to conserve the ecosystems and to support scientific, cultural, educational and recreational activities in an area where the threatened pied tamarin (Saguinus bicolor) is found.

Environmental and social groups have expressed concern that the reduced protection may result in the reserve being used by private interests or government sectors in an indiscriminate manner, as had happened with the downgrading of the conservation units on the Tapajós so a complex of hydroelectric power plants could be built..[1] On 2–8 September 2014 eight researcher from the IPÊ, in partnership with the Grupo Natureza, Sociedade e Conservação (NSC), met with 169 families in the RDS to complete the Social and Environmental Indicators for Conservation Units questionnaire.