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

is a matter about which many among older generations expressed grave concerns (cf.
Horowitz 1998: 383). The prospect this entails of loss of identity as a culturally
distinct group and capacity for economic self-sufficiency is one that is not at all
welcomed. However, these changes are taking place as a result of free choices by a
younger generation expressing its wish to be able to earn a cash income unavailable
to most within their home villages.
The full scale of the loss entailed in the collapse of the balata industry is thus
evident: it provided a means by which previous generations were able to integrate
into the national economy on their own terms. It appears that this integration took
place in a fashion to which subsistence practices could be readily adapted and which
allowed for people to earn a cash income via exploitation of a renewable resource
which could be extracted without causing environmental damage. The local body of
skills connected with forest use and the associated knowledge of forest ecology were
both augmented as people's employment compelled them to spend extended periods
resident in the forest and frequent areas which might not otherwise have been
visited. In these respects the balata industry can be considered to have been a
conservation success in both cultural and ecological terms, which may hold important
lessons for those seeking economic solutions to the current losses of diversity.
This study has shown that existing bodies of local skills and knowledge provide a
potential for the development of income-generating activities that share these
important properties. This is both in direct economic terms, in the well-explored basis
for extractive industries in local knowledge of the procurement and usage of wild
species, and in terms of the growing outside interest in the conservation importance
of the region. I have shown that Wapishana ethnoecology and the skills associated
with it are readily transferable to the context of scientific research in ecology, and
that their utility in local management can be enhanced by the incorporation of
insights based upon scientific research. The potential thus exists for a productive and
ongoing relationship, based upon a two-way intellectual exchange, between
Wapishana ethnoecologists and those who would seek to introduce scientific methods
of natural resource management to their home area. This could function both in the
context of local involvement in the management of formally designated protected
areas and in seeking to improve local competence in natural resource management on
titled Amerindian land.
Possible current strategies for the conservation of game, fish and other natural
resources appear to be encoded in the interaction of pulsed prohibitions on the
consumption of particular foods with the traditional system of land tenure, and in the