As a young man, Djalma Moreira Lima used to walk throughout the rainforest to collect copal resin. He would wander around for hours looking for jatobás, Amazonian trees whose trunks secrete the sticky substance, which turns hard in contact with the air and falls on the forest floor as little rocks. “When we found a tree that had it, whoever was smart enough to look among the leaves found more,” Lima told Mongabay. “We would come back with sacks loaded with 4 or 5 kilos [9-11 pounds] of resin.” Lima’s Suruacá community is located in the Extractivist Reserve Tapajós-Arapiuns, in the surroundings of Santarém, in the Brazilian state of Pará, an area that was a hub for copal resin production during most of the 20th century. The material, also known as jutaicica or rosin, is expelled by two species of trees every time there is a wound in their trunks — the jatobá (Hymenaea courbaril) secretes a lighter-colored transparent resin, while the jutaí’s (H. parvifolia) resin is more milky and dark. The jutaicica is secreted by jatobá and jutaí trees every time there is a wound on the trunk. After the resin turns hard, it falls on the ground and can be collected. Image by Diego Damázio Baloneque. “I think all the communities used to take rosin,” Lima said. The material collected by river and traditional communities was sent to Santarém, on the shores of the Amazon River, and from there to urban centers in Brazil and abroad. Mixed with…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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