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

Table 4.1. Percentage of households interviewed in Maruranau to report participation in
various categories of subsistence activity.
Activity Percentage of respondents reporting participation
Rearing Domestic Livestock 95
Swidden Agriculture 91
Fishing 85
Gathering of wild fruit 85
Hunting 73
Gathering of Animal Products 62
Keeping a House Garden 24
Intravillage variation is evident at the level of the hamlet or individual household.
Different people or groups concentrate to different degrees on different subsistence
activities depending on their skills, inclination, and other commitments, and also to
some extent according to the distribution of resources within the areas known to
them. Table 4.1 indicates the percentage of households interviewed during this study
reporting involvement in various broad categories of subsistence activities. This
indicates a certain level of variation in overall subsistence strategy, in that there is no
single activity in which all households interviewed claim to participate. However, four
of the seven categories of activity involve over 85 percent of households
interviewed, and two others well over half. These figures mask a great deal of
variation in the relative importance of different activities to different households,
some of which is detailed in the sections that follow. For example, a household
reporting involvement in hunting, fishing and livestock rearing may emphasise and be
mostly reliant on any one of these three as a source of protein, engaging in the
others only rarely. Specialisation among and within the categories employed in this
study may take a variety of forms. An individual will generally employ a combination
of techniques in subsistence, determined by their particular skills, knowledge and
access to tools, the range of natural resources available within the particular areas of
forest and savannah known to and exploited by them, and of course personal
inclination and taste. Illustrative examples include the powerful fish poison haiari
(Lonchocarpus sp.), whose trees are so rare that very few people know their location,
and the need for specially trained hunting dogs (and hence knowledge of the training
techniques, access to ‘binas’ — magical plants employed in training — and so on) for
the pursuit of certain game animals. Partly as a consequence of this specialisation,