Science Week: Day 3

Original Post: Tapajós-Arapiuns
Date: September 5, 2008 at 11:56 AM 

Several caboclo communities in the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve wanted to start a small furniture business using selected timbers from the forest.  To do so, they needed to prepare and submit a formal management plan to IBAMA, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Natural Resources.  They had no idea how to do this.  I did, however, and so in mid-2004, in collaboration with IPAM and with support from the Overbrook Foundation, I started working with a couple of communities in the reserve to collect the baseline data needed to write a management plan. 

The video was shot during the forest inventory and growth analysis work conducted by villagers from Nugini. The fieldwork involved 18 people who worked for 8 days, encountered 5 poisonous snakes, established 1,000 sample plots, and counted and measured 3,452 trees from 42 different species. More information about the Oficinas Caboclas do Tapajos and their forestry operations within the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve can be found here or here.

[NOTE: The management plan for Nugini was submitted to IBAMA and approved, and the community is now harvesting furniture woods from a 100 hectare management area on a sustained-yield basis.]