ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the resource management and income generation strategies of independent rubber tappers in the Acre River Valley of western Brazil with the hope that this information may improve development plans for the fragile Amazon rainforests. The concept of extractive reserves emerges as a local, Amazonian response to massive deforestation and environmentally and socially disastrous development schemes. Extractive reserves propose that much-discussed but rarely realized anodyne for development debacles, sustainable development. The fragile land use strategies of autonomous rubber tappers furnish them an income that puts them above half of the economically active population of the region. Rubber tappers carefully calculate the size and location of their gardens and pasture areas on their holdings relative to the varied natural resources they extract. The traditional company store system under which rubber tappers were tied to a single patron for all transactions has ended on Cachoeira, as on most estates in the region, many rubber tappers are in debt to middlemen.
