Qualla: Rio Vermelho State Forest

Rio Vermelho State Forest: 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. On paper, the Rio Vermelho State Forest was created in 1990 as two parcels of protected Amazon rainforest totaling roughly 190,000 hectares in the Brazilian state of Rondonia. On the ground, the story has been considerably messier. No management plan was ever written. The land was never properly demarcated. The federal government, which still owns the underlying property, never formally transferred it to the state. And over the following decades, the forest became entangled in a saga of squatters, dam builders, cattle ranchers, and competing government agencies that reads less like conservation policy and more like a land-tenure thriller.

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

Rio Vermelho State Forest: A Forest Divided at Birth

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 Rio Vermelho State Forest arrived in two pieces. Parcel "A" was established with 38,680 hectares and parcel "B" with 152,000 hectares. Neither received the demarcation or management infrastructure that Brazilian conservation law requires. Part of Parcel A was eventually absor...

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

Rio Vermelho State Forest: The Dam Deal

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. Everything changed in 2009 when the Jirau hydroelectric dam project needed Rondonia's cooperation. The state government held leverage: it could block environmental licensing for the dam, which would flood between 400 and 1,000 hectares of Rio Vermelho forest. A grand bargain took...

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

Rio Vermelho State Forest: Legal Whiplash

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. Federal law 12,249 of 2010 made the restructuring official and incorporated the Rio Vermelho forests into the expanded Mapinguari National Park -- adding roughly 180,900 hectares while carving out the area that the Jirau Dam reservoir would flood. But legal challenges arrived imm...

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

Rio Vermelho State Forest: The Forest That Would Not Stay Dead

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. An injunction from the state prosecutor in April 2014 suspended the legislative decrees revoking the protected areas. The case wound through the courts of Rondonia until May 2016, when the tribunal upheld the prosecutor's decision and restored the protections for the Rio Madeira ...

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