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

presented on cultural ecology. This considers existing applications of ethnoecological
knowledge in subsistence (chapter 8.1), and the use of ethnoecological data to
generate hypotheses concerning human effects on local ecosystems of relevance to
local management (chapter 8.2).
Research projects based on scientific methodologies have also found local skills
related to ethnoecology to be of great value, one example being the employment of
indigenous skills in botanical identification in a study of spider monkey (Ateles
paniscus) ecology in Surinam (Roosmalen 1985b: 42-3). Aché skills in tracking and
identifying the signs of animals greatly contributed to zoological surveys within the
forests inhabited by them (Hill et al. 1997). Local hunters in the Luangwa valley in
Zambia were employed in conducting monitoring of populations of wildlife in their area
(Marks 1994, 1996). Ecological surveys based upon the knowledge of local people
have been an extensive component of planning and design of the protected areas
network in Laos (Steinmetz 2000). This relatively new approach holds much promise:
it has been argued that it could form the basis for a paradigm shift in the science of
ecology and in the whole manner in which technological solutions to the current
environmental and social crises are sought (Berkes 1999). The present study included
a pilot project on the local ecology in which Wapishana hunters were asked to apply
their forest skills to the collection of biological data, and the outcome of this is
reported in chapter 8.3.
These four research questions determine the academic context of this
dissertation. Its content is based largely upon field data collected over two year-long
stays in Guyana in 1997-1998 and 1999-2000. Most of the research time was spent
among the Wapishana people of south-western Guyana, and the data presented
largely relates to these people. The next section provides a brief introduction to the
Wapishana, prior to a more detailed account of their history and present
circumstances in chapter three.
1.3 The Wapishana people
Guyana's Wapishana population has been the subject of very little previous
ethnographic study, and information on the group is fairly sparse. The earliest
available information dates back to the visits of the Schomburgk brothers in the first
part of the 19th century, accounts of which include various ethnographic
observations (Schomburgk 1923; Schomburgk 1931). Later explorers Everard Im
Thurn and William Brett also make reference to the Wapishana, although the latter’s
work is too blighted by Victorian bigotry to be of any value (Im Thurn 1883; Brett