Qualla: Cujubim Sustainable Development Reserve

Cujubim Sustainable Development Reserve: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. To reach it from Manaus by river takes about eight days. A flight to Fonte Boa Airport shortens the boat journey to three and a half. The name honors a bird - the blue-throated piping guan, Aburria cumanensis, called cujubim in the local dialect - and the reserve it graces is, at 24,503 square kilometers, the largest sustainable development reserve in the world. That makes Cujubim larger than the country of Slovenia, nearly the size of Vermont. Inside those boundaries, on the flat forest floors and flooded backwaters of the Jutai River basin, roughly 290 people live as their grandparents did - tapping rubber, fishing, and negotiating with the river.

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

Cujubim Sustainable Development Reserve: Where the Rivers Meet

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The reserve lies along the Jutai River, a tributary of the Solimoes that drains northeast through Amazonas state. The Bia and Mutum rivers run through it as well, each feeding the Jutai from different directions. This is a transitional zone where several protected areas knit toge...

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

Cujubim Sustainable Development Reserve: Rubber Soldiers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The story of who lives here begins in the 1940s. During World War II, after Japan captured the rubber plantations of Southeast Asia, the Allies needed Amazonian latex badly. Brazil and the United States launched a recruitment drive in the drought-stricken northeast, and tens of t...

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

Cujubim Sustainable Development Reserve: What Lives Here

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The reserve sits within the Inambari area of endemism - one of the most biologically diverse zones in the entire Amazon. Researchers have recorded over 700 species of plants, and biologists estimate at least 600 bird species, 90 bat species, and 16 primate species inhabit the for...

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

Cujubim Sustainable Development Reserve: An Economy of Trees

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Residents fish, hunt, farm small plots, and extract from the forest - oils, straw, vines, fruits, honey, and rubber. The most valuable timber species include Ceiba pentandra, copaiba, Virola, Calophyllum brasiliense, Ocotea cymbarum, Carapa, and Cedrela odorata, the last of which...

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

Cujubim Sustainable Development Reserve: A Reserve by Decree

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Cujubim became a reserve on September 5, 2003, created by decree 23.724 of the state of Amazonas. The deliberative council formed in April 2008, the management plan was approved in March 2009, and support has come through the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program - the internatio...

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