Qualla: Aquariquara Extractive Reserve

Aquariquara Extractive Reserve: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Sixteen murders in ten years. That was the toll reported to Rondonia's state legislature in April 2015 by members of the Aquariquara Extractive Reserve, a community of rubber tappers in the municipality of Vale do Anari who had been living under death threats for trying to protect their forest. The reserve, established in 1995 to safeguard traditional ways of life in the southern Amazon, had become a frontline in Brazil's ongoing war between conservation and exploitation -- a place where the people who knew the forest best were being killed for defending it.

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aquariquara Extractive Reserve: Remnants of the Rubber Concessions

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Aquariquara is one of fifteen small extractive reserves scattered across the municipalities of Machadinho d'Oeste, Cujubim, and Vale do Anari. All fifteen are remnants of the old seringais -- rubber extraction concessions named Seringal Santo Antonio, Seringal Sao Paulo, and Seri...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aquariquara Extractive Reserve: Walking the Estradas

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Life in Aquariquara revolves around latex. Families walk long forest trails called estradas to reach their rubber trees, scoring the bark with practiced cuts and returning hours later to collect the milky sap. On average, each family produces about 3,136 kilograms of latex per ye...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aquariquara Extractive Reserve: The Timber Trap

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Forest management offered a possible lifeline. Beginning around 2001, the reserve divided roughly half its area into 500-hectare lots, each to be harvested over one year on a predicted twenty-year rotation. Residents participated in inventories, identified trees by species, demar...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aquariquara Extractive Reserve: A Climate of Terror

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. When association members traveled to the state capital in April 2015 to address the Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, they did not come to discuss economics. They came to describe terrorism. Death threats had become routine. Sixteen people connected to the res...

Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0