Ethnoecology, Resource Use, Conservation And Development In A ...

forest animals and the local hydrological balance (Appell 1997). It may possibly be
significant in the latter respect that the abodes of the terrestrial spirits described
above are generally mountains. Reservation of deep pools within rivers as unexploited
zones by a combination of secular and religious methods is a strategy employed by
many fishing peoples of the Niger River. Its conservation functions are explicitly
recognised and have been incorporated into modern fishery management plans (Price
1995: 290-2). In the district of Churachandapur in north-eastern India, the
conservation functions of sacred groves, areas of forest not used for shifting
cultivation due to the local belief that they harboured nature spirits, are also a
component of modern management plans (Gadgil et al. 1998: 42-44). The evidence
that the system described among the Wapishana might also have conservation-
related functions is not at present incontrovertible, but is nonetheless compelling.
The mechanisms described may plausibly have formed key components of
systems for the regulation of human impact on populations of exploited wild species,
both at the level of populations of individual species and of forest, savannah and
riverine ecosystems. The reports of informants of the historical role of marunao in
this suggests that they played some sort of controlling role in this, prescribing food
prohibitions and opening (possibly also closing) previously inaccessible areas to
human activity. The questions of whether they did indeed fulfil roles as effective
decision makers concerning natural resource management, and if so how they
gathered and processed the information necessary to achieve this, are compelling.
Unfortunately, it seems that the reported degeneration of the system means that
they will never be answered. More importantly from the perspective of the present-
day Wapishana, there is a real danger that any regulatory functions that might have
existed are in the process of being lost. The possible effect of this on the ecological
impacts of resource use is an issue of great importance to local decision makers.