Ecotourism should be understood as an activity that includes knowledge on nature, educational experience through interpretation, appreciation of traditional local culture, and promotion of sustainable development. Ecotourism creates demands for services and handicraft articles, and consequently can mean jobs for local people. It encourages environmental education activities, as visitors should be adequately informed about what they are experiencing. When developed under these principles, it is capable of transforming the social actors involved in partners of the conservation work.

Based on this concept, IPÊ started to organize activities for sensitizing and qualifying the population living around Anavilhanas Ecological Station.

To manage this project, IPÊ has a boat, the Maíra I, which has become a critical means to get in touch with riverside communities. Maíra I navigates the Rio Negro to reach communities and make possible both the social and the environmental diagnoses of the region, and thereafter conducting environmental education to people who can become more sensitized toward a sustainable management of the region's natural resources.