Environmental conservation, large tropical hardwood trees from the Amazon rainforest at Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve in Acre State, Brazil - An extractive reserve is an area of land where access and use rights, including natural resource extraction, are allocated to local groups or communities - it limits deforestation both by the local residents preventing deforestation within their reserve, and by acting as a buffer zone that keeps ranching and extractive industry out of the forests beyond. In Brazil, the Extraction reserves are of public domain but the use of the land is allowed for traditional extractive populations. The units are used by these populations for their subsistence, based on extraction together with family agriculture. The aims of these reserves, as determined by the SNUC ( National System of Conservation Units ) is protect the means of life and culture of these populations and to guarantee the sustainable use of natural resource.