Deforestation and forest fires transforming the reality of the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve

Abstract

The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (RECM) is a sustainable use conservation unit that covers almost one million hectares, located in the state of Acre, in Brazil’s southwestern Amazon. Withten thousand in habitants estimated, it is a concrete example of the legacy of Chico Mendes and an emblematic one of the challenges faced by conservation units in the Amazon. Significant changes occurred since the reserve was created in 1990 in relation to deforestation and forest degradation. About 5.6% of the RECM, 54,741ha, was deforested between 1997 and 2016, according to Prodes / Inpe data. A comparison of deforestation rates recorded by Prodes and the Global Forest Change Project (GFC) showed deceptively similar results for the period 2000 to 2016: 31,485ha and 34,102ha, respectively. Only during the period 2007 to 2011, the two monitoring systems gave similar results. From 2012 to 2016, the GFC recorded annual rates about 75% higher than the annual Prodes rates. The average size of polygons per year increased 3x in the last 10 years, from 3 ha/year (2001 to 2006) to 8 ha/year (2007 to 2016), with 92% expansion of existing deforestation. The spatial distribution of deforestation was concentrated in ten of the 46 RECM rubber plantations, some of which recorded more than 50% deforestation by 2016, according to Prodes. Forest fires have been a major concern for the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, due to the impact of 50,363ha of forests degraded by fire, an area equal to total deforestation.  This degradation affects carbon stocks and damages the species used for extractivism. Scars from contiguous forest fires > 1,000ha formed more than half of the total burned area and occurred in sparsely populated areas of RECM. Severe droughts appear to be fundamental for the propagation of forest fires that originated in cleaning and tillage fires for pasture and/or agriculture of less than 30ha, providing a new paradigm of forest degradation by fire. With the increase in the average size of deforestation polygons, the RECM faces a situation that goes against the legacy of Chico Mendes: an expansion of deforestation for pastures and fire degradation of the forests that form the base of extractivism.