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

people use this and for what?", "How many times have you killed it?", "Are there any
times when you should not kill or use it?").
Experienced interviewees would often anticipate many or all of the standard set
of questions. Interviews would be concluded with another open-ended question, of
the form, "Is there anything more you can tell me about...?", thus providing another
opportunity to volunteer information not covered in any of the fixed questions. In
practice, a positive answer to this final question was obtained only in a small number
of interviews. Deviations were often followed, particularly when they appeared to be
leading to interesting information - for example, during a discussion of one species,
interviewees would often digress and start talking about a relative, predator or
competitor. Interviews on Agouti paca, for example, almost inevitably incorporated a
brief description of the hunting behaviour of Speothos venaticus, its major predator.
On most occasions, a single interviewee would participate in several interviews
successively on a one-to-one basis, over the course of a day or, in some cases,
several days. Some interviews were also conducted opportunistically, for example in a
break from other activities during the course of a day's fieldwork. The majority of
interviewees were mature men, experienced as hunters and in most cases having
spent extensive periods in the forest working as balata bleeders or in activities
associated with the balata industry. The initial intention was to document knowledge
acquired in hunting and other forest-based activities by those people with most
experience of the forest. The assumption that this would be a male-dominated
domain of knowledge remained untested during the course of this research
programme. While women tend, in general, to spend far less time in the forest than
men, and many women have little or no experience of the forest beyond their farming
area, it is certainly not the case that women are, as a whole, ignorant of the subjects
with which these interviews were concerned. Many women of all age groups had
extensive experience in the deep forest obtained by accompanying fathers, husbands
and other male relatives on hunting or balata bleeding expeditions.
Evidence of areas of ethnoecological knowledge in which women were more
proficient than men did emerge during the course of the study. In particular, many
older women were reported to have extensive experience of hunting, acquired during
the days of the balata industry when the seasonal depopulation of men forced them
to take over this traditionally male-dominated area of subsistence activity. Reports of
informants suggest that the profile of game species taken in these circumstances
differed considerably from that of male hunters, due to differences in hunting ranges
- activity was concentrated more greatly in the vicinity of the house and farm, and