Slaughter tapping is an obsolete method of extracting large quantities of

natural latex Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms) ...

from

rubber tree ''Hevea brasiliensis'', the Pará rubber tree, ''sharinga'' tree, seringueira, or most commonly, rubber tree or rubber plant, is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family Euphorbiaceae originally native to the Amazon basin, but is now ...

s in a forest environment. Prior to commercial exploitation of latex-bearing trees such as ''

Hevea brasiliensis ''Hevea brasiliensis'', the Pará rubber tree, ''sharinga'' tree, seringueira, or most commonly, rubber tree or rubber plant, is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family Euphorbiaceae originally native to the Amazon basin, but is now pa ...

'' in the Amazon Basin and '' Funtumia elastica'' in the Congo, native populations limited harvesting to non-lethal tapping of the latex. However, with the rising demand for rubber worldwide in the late nineteenth century,

debt-slave Debt bondage, also known as debt slavery, bonded labour, or peonage, is the pledge of a person's services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Where the terms of the repayment are not clearly or reasonably stated, the per ...

"hunters" began tapping more intensively, using ladders to extract as much latex as possible from all areas of the tree, killing the tree as a result. This "slaughter tapping" resulted in the destruction of all latex-bearing trees across large swathes of sub-Saharan Africa and South America. Eventually, the establishment of rubber

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Th ...

s in the

Far East The ''Far East'' was a European term to refer to the geographical regions that includes East and Southeast Asia as well as the Russian Far East to a lesser extent. South Asia is sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons. The te ...

made "hunting" of naturally occurring rubber trees unprofitable, and the practice largely ceased in the early twentieth century.

References

*Hobhouse, Henry (2003, 2005). Seeds of Wealth: Five Plants That Made Men Rich. Shoemaker & Hoard. pp. 141–142. {{ISBN, 1-59376-089-2. Rubber Environmental issues with forests