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

Agriculture is the basis of Wapishana subsistence and forest use (chapter 4.2).
Productivity of the forest ecosystem is diverted to human use directly by the
cultivation of food plants, and indirectly by the use of the habitat spaces thus
created by useful non-domesticated species — crop predators, gap-adapted plant
species of direct utility and others that attract useful animal species to fallows — and
consequent human harvesting of these populations. There appears to be no conscious
notion of either conservation, or of management for purposes other than the direct
cultivation of crops. Further, there is no evidence of any emic concept analogous to
that of the mixed-use agroecosystem that I would employ, within which a perspective
of a management system might be encoded.
In agriculture and other areas of subsistence, people are clearly aware of the
direct ecological consequences of their actions. This is the basis for current concerns
about fish-poisoning and felling fruit trees, the reports of population declines in over-
exploited animal species, and, at least partly, the recognition of the need to maintain
fallow periods of appropriate length. However, I found no evidence that people are
consciously aware of the systemic properties of the local subsistence system. While it
seems likely that this system has significant ecological effects with important
implications for human subsistence (chapter 4.2.6), any management functions it
incorporates are certainly covert.
Subsistence activities appear to be regulated via mechanisms not explicitly
recognised as such, but which may nonetheless promote sustainable use of game
populations and other natural resources exploited by people (chapter 5.5).
Temporary prohibitions on the consumption of certain types of foods, especially
meat, can for their duration ensure a relaxation, or total cessation, of species-specific
hunting pressures within particular hunting areas. The maintenance of spatial reserves
in particular areas of forest and river may function to provide refuge areas where
population growth of exploited species can take place unhindered by human
harvesting, thus providing a surplus population for dispersal into adjacent areas where
populations have been depressed, or an area which can be opened up for human use
if circumstances make this necessary.
Degradation of these systems as a result of cultural change has made certain of
their key features obscure to this study. It appears that specialised shamans formerly
exercised control over these systems, thus providing the link between rules and
behaviour, the two aspects of the definition of management given above. While this
control mechanism has not entirely disappeared, results obtained in this study
suggest that it is in decline. This unfortunately makes inaccessible what are perhaps