Complex interactions between biodiversity and indigenous amazonian cultures

Background/Question/Methods

The 300 to 500 million indigenous peoples of the world represent 5000 distinct ethnic groups and occupy 20% of the world's land surface. Indigenous peoples occupy or hold title to 26% of the Amazon Basin, broadly defined to include the Orinoco watershed. This is equivalent to the land extension currently designated as category I-IV protected areas, and proposed biodiversity conservation corridors include extensive areas of indigenous land. Although there is evidence that in the Amazon officially titled indigenous territories are more effective that protected areas at preventing forest clearing, there is also evidence that as indigenous peoples become sedentary and integrate with national socio-economic systems, they exert unsustainable pressure on vertebrate game animals. Such overexploitation appears to be a consequence of complex interactions between indigenous resource-use practices, a growing population, adoption of new technologies, and direct and indirect influences from the surrounding non-indigenous landscape (roads, cities, markets, wage employment, agribusiness, etc.). Taking a coupled natural-human system approach to these lands offers a different perspective and possibly different management solutions. Vertebrate game animals have been persistently hunted in these regions for millennia, and continue to provide an irreplaceable source of protein for indigenous populations. These animals form part of complex spiritual systems that govern human interactions with other different elements of the natural environment. In a linked system, non-human vertebrate abundance and diversity patterns may reflect long-term human use patterns and spiritual belief systems.  We describe spatial patterns of vertebrate biodiversity and abundance for the North Rupununi region of Guyana, South America, relate them to cultural practices of indigenous peoples over an approximately 48,000 km sq. area. From 2007 to 2010, trained Makushi and Wapishana para-researchers interviewed over 9500 people from 23 indigenous villages. Para-researchers also walked over 43,000 km along 216 independent transects, randomly placed around 23 villages and 4 unhunted control areas.

Results/Conclusions

Para-researchers recorded 84,028 records of animal sign and over 48,000 animal sightings for about 300 species. In addition, they recorded more than 33,000 fruit patches on the same transects. Although hunters killed 8,408 individual animals, we did not find evidence of overhunting for the most hunted species. Vegetation type and indigenous cultural norms rather than economic factors had the greatest influence on the abundance of the most commonly hunted species.  We conclude that “traditional” cultural norms and intact forests exert powerful positive feedbacks for maintaining animal populations. In contrast, economic factors had little impact.