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

that strongly indicate prior unsustainable levels of exploitation (chapters 4.5.1,
8.1.5). In each of these examples, however, the reported decline has been of a very
large magnitude. My overall impression is that it is only in such dramatic cases can
ethnoecology, used in isolation, provide a reliable indication of sustainability. In most
circumstances it must also be employed in conjunction with scientific methods.
Evaluation of sustainability in scientific ecology generally takes the form of
observations of changes in abundance of animals. This may be either sightings per
unit survey effort or, in the case of exploited populations, catch per capture unit
effort. This is essentially a formalisation of the method employed by people in
observing the declines in abundance of particular species reported above. In the
informal case, the accuracy is limited by the unreliability of human memory -
perceptions of abundance will generally be very impressionistic, and memories of the
time-scales over which they occur unreliable. Scientific biology collects such
observations in a systematic and accurate fashion, such that their precision and utility
are far greater, and thus provides a more powerful framework for their recording and
analysis. This approach can, in turn, be enhanced by the particular contributions that
ethnoecology has to make.
Most importantly, hunting activity itself can provide an opportunity for data
collection. Collection and measuring of skulls provided by hunters, in connection with
interview data, was successfully incorporated into a study of Ebolo hunting behaviour
(Dwyer 1990). Both the accuracy and the extent of hunters' participation in such a
programme can be enhanced if hunters maintain their own records of hunting trips,
sightings and successful kills (Bodmer and Puertas 2000). The body of data collected
can be enhanced by the incorporation of observations of tracks and other animal
signs, of which local hunters are invariably the most proficient observers and
interpreters (Hill et al. 1997). Further, as shown in this study, ethnoecology can
provide highly detailed local information on habitat use, seasonal movements and
responses to predators and competitors of hunted animals, all of which factors would
need to be incorporated into the data collection and analysis regimes of a monitoring
programme.
This thesis has thus confirmed and advanced the arguments of several previous,
less extensive studies. First, that ethnoecological knowledge incorporates a large
quantity of information that can be used to generate biological data (Townsend
1995; Ponte Johansons 1995; Ferguson et al. 1998; Myrmin et al. 1999; Huntington
et al. 1999). That ethnoecology and scientific ecology therefore possess a
substantial area of common ground (cf. Agrawal 1995), but also, and crucially, differ