Qualla: Lago do Cunia Extractive Reserve

Lago do Cunia Extractive Reserve: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Fifty families and an 18,000-hectare lake -- that is the equation at the heart of the Lago do Cunia Extractive Reserve. Established in 1999 on the left bank of the Madeira River in Rondonia, Brazil, this 55,850-hectare tract of floodplain and savanna-rainforest contact was not set aside to lock people out. It was created to keep them in. The roughly 400 residents who live here fish the lake's waters, craft canoes using techniques learned from Indigenous peoples generations ago, and sell their catch to sustain a way of life that has persisted while the Amazon around them has transformed almost beyond recognition.

Lago do Cunia Extractive Reserve: Where River Meets Savanna

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The reserve occupies a landscape shaped entirely by water. Sitting on the western bank of the Madeira River, one of the Amazon's mightiest tributaries, the terrain alternates between river floodplains and soft, rounded hills that rarely climb above 83 meters. The Cunia Lake itsel...

Lago do Cunia Extractive Reserve: A Census of Wings and Scales

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The richness of Cunia's fauna becomes obvious at the water's edge. Great egrets stand motionless in the shallows, their white plumage catching the equatorial light. Jabiru storks, the tallest flying birds in the Americas, wade through flooded meadows alongside maguari storks and ...

Lago do Cunia Extractive Reserve: The Art of the Dugout

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What makes an extractive reserve different from a national park or biological station is the presence -- and the primacy -- of people. The approximately 400 residents living in fifty families across the reserve are not visitors or caretakers in a conventional sense. They are the ...

Lago do Cunia Extractive Reserve: A Network of Protected Lands

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Lago do Cunia Extractive Reserve does not stand alone. Created by federal decree on November 10, 1999, it is administered by ICMBio, the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, and classified as IUCN Category VI -- a designation that explicitly balances conserva...