About Acre State, Brazil

90% of Acre's forest remains

Acre is Brazil's westernmost State, lying in the southwest corner of the Amazon river-basin, bordering Bolivia and Peru.

Despite the enormously fast rate of deforestation in the Amazon region, it's thought that nearly 90% of Acre's 150,000 square kilometres is still covered with tropical rainforest - much of it relatively untouched!

A hidden biodiversity
Deep within the rainforests lives a huge variety of plants and animals, making Acre one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet.

One can find up to 300 different types of tree in just one hectare of Acre's forests. And on the animal front, scientists estimate that more than 200
species of mammal can be found in Acre, as well as 950 bird species and 2,500 species of fish - including the world's largest freshwater fish, the pirarucu.

One creature, though, that is well-known to even
the city populations is the people-friendly Emperor Tamarin, a tiny monkey-like creature with big white moustache, which lives in Acre and nowhere else.

Acre’s landscape
But what does Acre look like? According to Luis Meneses, WWF's project leader in the area, you "... typically drive along a road  with cattle pastures on either side and can see the forests about 2 to 3 kilometres beyond the pastures. Actually sometimes it's a very sad sight because you can see gigantic Brazil nut trees standing in the middle of these pastures.

The cattle-farmers aren't allowed to cut down the trees - that's prohibited - but when the pastures are burnt year after year, as is the tradition here, these giant trees gradually get killed off. So that makes it a very sad landscape for me."

On the other hand Luis Meneses has several favourite places in Acre. "The Jurua river in the north of Acre is a pearl," he says. "I also think that some of the lakes are like jewels in the Amazon forest. Deep green waters with big white beaches and forest all around. Really beautiful," says Luis.

Meanwhile within the forests you often find sitinguas - old rubber-tapper farms. These are small open areas of about 3 hectares which are surrounded on all sides by dense forest. And the rubber-tappers - or seringuieros - cut a narrow path leading through the trees to their agricultural plot.

Local population
Around 500,000 people live in Brazil's smallest state - and more than half of the population is concentrated in the south-west of Acre, in and around the state capital, Rio Branco.

There are 14 different ethnic tribes in Acre. The biggest is the Kaxiawa which has about 5,000 tribe members - a population that is increasing very quickly at 3% per year- 4 times faster than the average population.