What do rubber tappers do in the Amazon rainforest?
Rubber tappers have lived in the Amazon basin for many generations. Rubber tappers “tap,” or collect, the sap from rubber trees that grow in the rainforest. The sap is then dried to make rubber products such as erasers or tires for cars and bikes.
What do rubber tappers do?
Tappers milk the trees for their sap by cutting them and collecting what comes out in small metal buckets. The rubber tappers use a whistle that mimics a local bird as they move from rubber tree to tree. They say they use it to disguise themselves in the forest so they won’t startle the wildlife.
How much rubber comes from the Amazon rainforest?
Some 11 million tonnes is natural rubber, mainly grown in large plantations in Asia. Less than 1% comes from rubber trees growing wild in the Amazon where rubber originated.
Where did rubber tappers come from?
Rubber tappers from Brazil, Peru and Bolivia share experiences on rainforest rubber. The tapping of rubber from rubber trees growing wild in the Amazon rainforest is still an important economic activity in the region.
How did rubber get its name?
Rubber actually got its name when people in Britain figured out that it could be used to erase or “rub out” mistakes made with a pencil. These little blobs of bouncy stretchy stuff used to rub out errors were called “rubbers.” The British still call them that.
How do rubber tappers get rubber?
Rubber tapping is the process by which latex is collected from a rubber tree. The latex is harvested by slicing a groove into the bark of the tree at a depth of one-quarter inch (6.4 mm) with a hooked knife and peeling back the bark.
When did the rubber tappers arrive to the Amazon rainforest?
1870s
Rubber Tapping Does Not Hurt the Forest Rubber tappers first came to the Amazon in the 1870s. They were hired to work on rubber tree plantations in the rainforest. When the price of rubber dropped, most of the plantations were abandoned.
What is a rubber tapper?
For centuries, those who made a living by extracting and collecting rubber from rubber trees had been virtual slaves to the powerful rubber barons who controlled the Amazon region. Attempts were made in the 1960s to unionize these workers, called “rubber tappers;” however, these attempts failed.
What happened to the rubber tappers in the 1970s?
The 1970s marked a shift in the dynamics of the extraction of resources from the Amazon. Ranchers from Southern Brazil began to buy up huge tracts of land in order to clear them for cattle grazing land. The rubber tappers who lived on this land were forcibly evicted, cutting them off from their source of income.
What did Mendes do to save the rubber tappers?
In his speeches, Mendes drew a link between survival of the forest and survival of the rubber tappers, whose means of support was the Brazilian nuts and rubber they gathered from the forest. 1977 also marked the creation of a weekly paper called the Varadoura, which was founded to broadcast information on the deforestation of Acre region.
What did Chico do to help the rubber tappers?
In 1979 Chico introduced a strategy to establish schools and cooperatives on the rubber estates. The rational behind this agenda was that these programs would improve the living conditions on the estates, which would in turn give rubber tappers more incentive to organize to keep their lands and remain in the forest.