The potential of small farm forestry in the economic development of the Transamazon highway.
Eirivelthon
Lima, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, elima@ipam.org.br
(Presenting)
Frank
Merry, Woods Hole Research Center, fmerry@whrc.org
Maria
Rosenildes Guimarães dos
Santos, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, rosenildes@ipam.org.br
Ailton
Alves, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, ailton@ipam.org.br
Daniel
Curtis
Nepstad, Woods Hole Research Center, dnepstad@whrc.org
Over the past three decades, more than 30,000 families have been formally settled on the Transamazon highway, each with an average lot size of 100 hectares. Informal settlement adds even more families to the total. The forest resources of this group may provide the solution to many of the problems of illegal logging in the region, but yet approved access is difficult. Few methods have been developed for small farm forestry in the Amazon and the families themselves know little of forest management. In this research we begin the process of bridging the gap between the forest industry and the smallholders with the forest stock by identifying where small farm forestry may be possible and providing this information to both the industry and the colonists alike. The preliminary stage of this research is a planning map that shows where such community forestry projects may be feasible. This is based on GIS mapping techniques, the descriptive statistics from a large survey of families along the entire highway (n=2,831), and a survey of the timber industry along the highway (n=83).