Man and Fisheries on an Amazon Frontier

The southwestern Amazon basin, centering on the Territory of Rondönia and the State of Acre, is symbolically if not exactly geographically, the Wild Wild West of Brazil's northern rainforest fron tier. In Brazil the name Rondönia evokes exaggerated images of lawlessness, land feuding, and indigent peasants in search of a homestead. Despite the problems and the perception, the region has pushed ahead, in the view of the govern­ ment, with large-scale deforestation and the establishment of ca...