Ethnoprimatology and Conservation: Applying Insights and Developing Practice

Abstract

Today, in the Anthropocene, humans are changing global and local ecologies as fast as, or faster than, we can study them (eg. Rose 2009, Palmer et al. 2004). For primates this has a dire impact; nearly half of all primate taxa are under serious threat of population reduction/fragmentation, substantive landscape/ecology alteration and for many even extinction. In the practice of primatology this fact is at the forefront of any project and every analysis. It has become a necessity to employ a revised primatological practice, one that places humans and other primates in integrated and shared ecological and social spaces. This approach is epitomized by the current practice of ethnoprimatology. In ethnoprimatology the “ethno” prefix represents the inclusion of anthropogenic aspects, including the social, economic, and political histories and contexts as core components in the ecologies, and lives, of other primates (Sponsel 1997; Fuentes 2012; Malone et al. 2014). It is at the interface of human and other primate lives that much of the challenge to primatology exists, and at that boundary conservation, sustainability and management come to the forefront (Fuentes 2012; Fuentes & Hockings 2010; Fuentes & Wolfe 2002; Riley 2007). Ethnoprimatological approaches “affirm the role of humans as primates, of other primates as co-participants in shaping social and ecological space, recognizing mutual roles in both ecological and cultural interconnections” (Fuentes 2012: 102). Here we draw on a range of recent work in ethnoprimatology and allied areas to demonstrate how such approaches create a fruitful venue for integrating primatological inquiry and conservation and management practice via assessing the mutual ecologies, evolutionary histories, and social lives at the interface of humans and other primates (e.g., Fuentes & Wolfe 2002; Paterson & Wallis 2005; Fuentes & Hockings 2010; Riley et al. 2011; Malone et al. 2014).