Qualla: Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve

Jaci Paraná 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. Fifteen of sixteen state deputies voted to make the forest disappear. On 11 February 2014, the Rondônia state legislature passed a decree revoking the Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve — nearly 200,000 hectares of Amazon forest where rubber tappers had gathered Brazil nuts, cupuaçu, and açaí for over a century. Defending the vote, Deputy Ribamar Araújo declared that the only development model that worked for Rondônia was for forest to give way to agriculture and livestock. It was a remarkably honest statement of intent, and it took a coalition of more than 600 organizations, a state prosecutor, and a court ruling two years later to undo it.

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

Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve: A Century of Rubber and Rain

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. The land that became the Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve had been worked long before anyone drew its boundaries on a map. Rubber concessions in this area — generically called the Jaci Paraná concessions — date back more than a hundred years, to the era when Amazonian rubber fueled...

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

Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve: Cattle in the Canopy's Shadow

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. By 2014, roughly 200 illegal cattle ranches had established themselves inside the reserve, running over 44,000 head of cattle on land that was supposed to belong to rubber tappers and Brazil nut gatherers. The invasion had been building for years. Between 2002 and 2007, according...

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

Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve: The Vote to Erase a Forest

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. On 16 January 2014, owners of cattle in the reserve were given 40 days to remove their herds. The ranchers' response was swift and political: less than a month later, the state legislature passed decree 506, revoking the 1996 decree that had created the reserve. The same session ...

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

Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve: Six Hundred Organizations Push Back

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. The Amazon Working Group — a coalition of more than 600 organizations representing farmers, rubber tappers, indigenous communities, quilombolas, environmentalists, and human rights groups — published an open letter denouncing the decree. On 14 April 2014, the state prosecutor obt...

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

Jaci Paraná Extractive Reserve: Boundaries Still Contested

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. The reserve's 197,364 hectares span three municipalities — Porto Velho holds nearly two-thirds of the area, with Buritis and Nova Mamoré containing the rest. The Jaci Paraná River traces its western boundary. To the east lies the Rio Pardo Environmental Protection Area; to the no...

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