The creation of protected areas (PAs) is not always based on science; consequently, some aquatic species may not receive the same level of protection as terrestrial ones. The objective of this study was to identify priority areas for the conservation of chelonians in the Brazilian Amazon basin and assess the contribution of PAs, distinguishing between Full Protection Areas, Sustainable Use Areas, and Indigenous Lands for group protection. The entire species modeling procedure was carried out using Species Distribution Models. Location records were obtained from platforms such as SpeciesLink, GBIF, the Hydroatlas database, and WorldClim for bioclimatic variables adjusted with algorithms like Maximum Entropy, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Gaussian-Bayesian. Indigenous lands cover more than 50% of the distribution areas of chelonian species in the Brazilian Amazon. Protected areas with higher conservation importance (Full Protection Areas and Sustainable Use Areas) hold less than 15% of the combined species distribution. Researchers face significant challenges when making decisions with models, especially in conservation efforts involving diverse taxa that differ significantly from one another within a group of individuals.

保护区 (PA) 的创建并不总是基于科学；因此，一些水生物种可能无法获得与陆生物种同等程度的保护。本研究的目的是确定巴西亚马逊流域龟类保护的优先领域，并评估保护区的贡献，区分完全保护区、可持续利用区和土著土地进行群体保护。整个物种建模过程是使用物种分布模型进行的。位置记录是从 SpeciesLink、GBIF、Hydratlas 数据库和 WorldClim 等平台获得的，用于使用最大熵、随机森林、支持向量机和高斯贝叶斯等算法调整的生物气候变量。土著土地覆盖了巴西亚马逊地区龟类分布区的 50% 以上。具有较高保护重要性的保护区（完全保护区和可持续利用区）所占物种总分布的比例不到 15%。研究人员在利用模型做出决策时面临着重大挑战，特别是在涉及一组个体中彼此存在显着差异的不同类群的保护工作中。