Qualla: Jamanxim National Forest

Jamanxim National Forest: 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. In the 1970s, Brazil's military government encouraged nearly a thousand families to settle along the BR-163, a red-dirt highway being pushed through the Amazon to connect the soybean frontier of Mato Grosso with the Amazon River port of Santarém. Nobody gave those families land titles. Most are still waiting for them. In 2006, in an effort to slow one of the highest deforestation rates in the Amazon, the federal government drew a line around 1.3 million hectares of that same stretch and declared it the Jamanxim National Forest. The families were suddenly, by decree, inside a protected area. Everything that has happened since flows from that contradiction.

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

Jamanxim National Forest: A Line Drawn Along a Highway

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MidyLobo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The BR-163 cuts through the heart of the state of Pará, slicing south to north through some of the most biodiverse forest in the world. Clearing tends to follow roads in the Amazon, and the deforestation statistics along this highway have been alarming for decades. The Jamanxim N...

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Image: MidyLobo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jamanxim National Forest: Settlers Who Were Invited

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas Soares de Lima, CC BY-SA 4.0. The central legal and moral knot here is that the people now inside the forest did not invade it. The Brazilian government, back during the dictatorship, had actively recruited them to settle along the highway as part of a national development project. Land titles were promised b...

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Image: Lucas Soares de Lima | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jamanxim National Forest: The Pace of Loss

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas Soares de Lima, CC BY-SA 4.0. Whatever the legal merits, the forest kept falling. In 2009 alone, Jamanxim lost 60 square kilometers of coverage, with 18.8 square kilometers cleared in the single month of June. By that year, about 12 percent of the national forest had been cleared - and roughly half of that cl...

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Image: Lucas Soares de Lima | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jamanxim National Forest: Numbers That Did Not Agree

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas Soares de Lima, CC BY-SA 4.0. Negotiations dragged on for years. ICMBio proposed carving out 250,000 hectares inside the national forest for the settlers - effectively ceding about a fifth of the protected area to permanent agricultural use. The farmers' associations wanted 415,000 hectares. Neither side woul...

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Image: Lucas Soares de Lima | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jamanxim National Forest: In a Larger Protected Block

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erick Caldas Xavier, CC BY-SA 4.0. Jamanxim is not alone. The region around the BR-163 now contains twelve sustainable-use conservation areas and six strictly protected reserves. The protected areas include the Amazônia, Jamanxim, Rio Novo, and Serra do Pardo national parks, the Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biol...

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Image: Erick Caldas Xavier | CC BY-SA 4.0