The international trade in wild animals skins from the Brazilian Amazon in the 20th Century

Abstract

Throughout the 20th century, an international trade in animal hides resulted in the slaughter of millions of mammals and reptiles in the Amazon. Animal hides were purchased from extractivists through a network of traveling river merchants in a regime of debt peonage known as aviamento, carried from trade posts in the hinterlands to warehouses in Manaus and Belém, and then exported to the United States, Europe and southern Brazil. Here we analyze previously unpublished shipping invoices from the famous merchant empire of J. G. Araujo as well as public port registries and commercial statistics from Manaus (Manáos Harbour Ltd., Associação Comercial do Amazonas). The international trade in Amazonian animal hides intensified immediately after the 1912 crash in rubber prices and spiked between 1935 and 1946, with a peak during World War II. The second spike occurred in the 1960s, mainly after the passage of Brazil's 1967 "Wild Animal Protection Law" intended to halt this trade. Throughout the period leading up to the adoption of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1973-1975, there was no significant depreciation in the price or international demand for animal skins, suggesting constant and intense hunting effort for nearly half a century.