Qualla: Rio Ouro Preto Extractive Reserve

Rio Ouro Preto 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. The houses stand on stilts because the river insists. Every rainy season, the Ouro Preto spills over its banks and floods the surrounding forest with dark water stained by suspended organic matter. When the waters recede between September and October, the river turns greenish and shrinks between its banks, and the rubber tappers walk their forest trails again, scoring the bark of Hevea trees and collecting the milky latex in tin cups. This is the rhythm of the Rio Ouro Preto Extractive Reserve -- 204,631 hectares of Amazonian forest in Rondonia, Brazil, where roughly 500 people live by a bargain struck between a murdered activist's vision and the oldest economy in the Amazon.

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

Rio Ouro Preto Extractive Reserve: What Chico Mendes Built

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jorge Nunes de Oliveira Filho, CC BY-SA 4.0. On January 30, 1990 -- just over a year after rubber tapper and union leader Chico Mendes was shot dead on the doorstep of his home in Xapuri, Acre -- Brazilian President Jose Sarney signed a decree creating the first four extractive reserves in the Amazon. The concept was radica...

Image: Jorge Nunes de Oliveira Filho | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rio Ouro Preto Extractive Reserve: Between Two Ridges

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Itsbellaribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0. The reserve occupies the basin of the Ouro Preto River between two parallel east-west ranges of hills, extending westward to where the Ouro Preto joins the Pacaas Novos River. It straddles the municipalities of Guajara-Mirim, which contains nearly three-quarters of the reserve, a...

Image: Itsbellaribeiro | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rio Ouro Preto Extractive Reserve: A Forest of Black Earth and Bird Song

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jorge Nunes de Oliveira Filho, CC BY-SA 4.0. Average annual rainfall reaches 2,200 millimeters, and the Ouro Preto's water levels swing by more than three meters between the dry season lows and the March peaks. The vegetation shifts from open forest to palm-studded canopy to flooded gallery forest along the riverbanks, with...

Image: Jorge Nunes de Oliveira Filho | CC BY-SA 4.0

Rio Ouro Preto Extractive Reserve: Rubber Paths and Rainy Season Wages

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jorge Nunes de Oliveira Filho, CC BY-SA 4.0. Life in the reserve follows two calendars. In the dry months from July to December, families work their rubber paths, tapping the Hevea brasiliensis and Hevea benthamiana trees and processing the raw latex into sheets. Rubber extraction accounts for roughly half the monthly incom...

Image: Jorge Nunes de Oliveira Filho | CC BY-SA 4.0