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

target species, with a greater focus on avian species. Both within the field of interest
of this particular study, and especially more generally, the documentation of female-
dominated areas of knowledge remains an important goal in the recording of
Wapishana ethnoecology.
2. Unsupervised writing of information by informants.
Some experienced, literate informants were provided with notebooks and wrote notes
on various species in their own time. In some cases, a follow-up interview was
conducted of the same format as above, but in which the first question was
functionally replaced by the written notes.
3. Ad hoc elicitation of information and volunteering of information by informants
In the course of trips to the forest, my companions would often point out the food
plants of particular animals or their feeding signs, their tracks (indicating habitat use
and the size and composition of groups), their sleeping or resting places, seedlings
dispersed by animals, and other things they considered to be of interest to me. Such
incidents provided useful information either not recalled or not considered relevant in
the interview context, and often provided a foundation for further discussions on the
local ecology. Some informants also took the opportunity to demonstrate points they
had made to me in earlier interviews.
4. Observations of the application of ecological knowledge in praxis.
In some cases I was able to document knowledge that was either implicit or which for
some other reason was not covered in interviews, by observing how people apply
their ecological knowledge in the course of forest-based activities. This took place
during the course of normal subsistence activities, such as hunting, fishing and
gathering, but was perhaps most graphically demonstrated when people were
involved in the collection of ecological data (see chapter 8.3). I worked with several
people in recording field data on animal ecology and describing tree plots, activities
which oblige people to engage in intimate interactions with the forest. I was
continually impressed by the levels of detailed knowledge and understanding applied
by people in undertaking these tasks. In both their subsistence and research tasks,
people were employing skills and knowledge that were clearly covert and impossible
to express in the abstract. This also raised problems in its documentation, such
insubstantive phenomena being difficult to record accurately in the abstract medium
provided by fieldnotes.