Livelihoods or Hardwoods: Extractive Reserves, Logging, and a Sustainable Future?

Recently images of indigenous groups stripping loggers to their underwear and running them off the land have been in the media. This paper will examine the extractive reserve policy and implications and alternative conservation strategies in Gurupá, Para. Gurupá is located roughly 500 nautical miles inland from the mouth of the Amazon, in the northeastern state of Pará, near the confluence of the Amazon and Xingu rivers. Extractive reserves are governmentally relegated, rural, tracts of land set aside to stymie Amazonian land degradation. Extractive reserves in Gurupá are seen, by most, to be a great success. Yet, problems still underpin the success seen in the region. The land relegated by the government is not in the total control of people living here.Thus policy makers have to put at the center the people living the every day experience.