Qualla: Medio Purus Extractive Reserve

Medio Purus Extractive Reserve: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Purus River does not hold still. Its muddy waters carve new channels through the floodplain, abandon old ones, and redraw the map with every rainy season. Along a stretch of this restless river between the towns of Pauini and Labrea, in the deep interior of Amazonas state, ninety-two communities have organized their lives around its rhythms. The Medio Purus Extractive Reserve protects 604,209 hectares of their homeland -- a territory larger than the country of Brunei, where 1,400 families harvest Brazil nuts, tap rubber trees, collect acai and copaiba oil, and fish the lakes and flooded forests that the river creates and reclaims in an endless cycle.

Medio Purus Extractive Reserve: Where the River Decides

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The reserve stretches along the Purus River from just below Pauini in the west to Labrea in the east, spanning parts of three municipalities: Labrea holds 91.41 percent of the land, Pauini 8.26 percent, and Tapaua a sliver of 0.33 percent. The Purus is a muddy-water river, heavy ...

Medio Purus Extractive Reserve: A Community's Petition

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Medio Purus Extractive Reserve did not come from above. It came from a request. In 2001, the local extractive community association petitioned IBAMA, Brazil's environmental agency, for the legal right to occupy their traditional lands and to expel communities that were degrad...

Medio Purus Extractive Reserve: Ninety-Two Ways to Live on a River

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The communities of the Medio Purus are riverine in the fullest sense. The Purus and its floodplain dictate the calendar: when the waters rise, fishing shifts to the flooded forests and oxbow lakes; when they recede, Brazil nut collection begins beneath towering castanheiras. Rubb...

Medio Purus Extractive Reserve: The BR-319 Shadow

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In January 2012, a federal ordinance established a joint planning process for eleven conservation units in the area of influence of the BR-319 highway, the road connecting Manaus to Porto Velho. The Medio Purus Extractive Reserve was among them, alongside the Ituxi Extractive Res...