Extracting Humans from Nature

Abstract

Traditional and indigenous people can claim incontrovertible rights to their land. As morally responsible humans we must support their struggle. This responsibility does not mean that as conservationists we must count as conservation everything that these people have done and wish to do. As independent peoples with rights to selfdetermination, their future should be in their own handswhether that future meets our expectations or not. It is remarkable that we find ourselves making this obvious point to a group of experienced and savvy professionals who have spent considerable time in defense of indigenous and traditional peoples. won't claim to tell Steve Schwartzman and his co-authors about the political virtues or shortcomings of rubber tappers and Amazonian Indians, because they are experts in such matters, insofar as outsiders can be. Nevertheless, speaking on behalf of those peoples as if their interests were identical with conservation, biodiversity, and parks is disingenuous. In taking such a tack, the authors enter a twisted labyrinth of reasoning, which we find tortuous and politically dangerous for both conservation and forest-dwelling peoples. First, we thought that in various ways we had already published conclusions similar to those in the paper by Schwartzman et al. (Redford & Stearman 1993; Redford & Mansour 1996; Sanderson & Bird 1998). But, to our major disappointment, the authors use this very literature to set up a straw man, claiming the existence of an extremist group practicing preservationist absolutism and advocating the perfect against the good. Then they demolish the straw man with a flourish, arriving at a conclusion that is eminently reasonable, if derived differently. Our concern is that they arrive at their major point by accusing potential allies rather than recruiting them. The more important fault with the paper lies in an incomplete reading of the current literature, leading to unnecessary and sometimes incorrect conclusions. This is best illustrated with the repeated claim that indigenous human impact is inconsequential for biodiversity, based on a weak reading of the literature on human hunting. Schwartzman et al. state that We are unaware of rigorously documented cases of local extinction, or severe depletion, of large animals-or any other species-in indigenous or extractive reserves. Several studies suggest that, to the contrary, hunting by forest communities' even over the long term, has not had these effects and that, given adequate territory, it does not threaten game species. They cite three references for this claim, none of which can support their conclusion. Further, the mounting evidence in the literature strengthens the main vein of the literature, that in virtually all cases large game animals are strongly depleted where human population densities exceed one person per square kilometer (Robinson & Bennett 2000a). This conclusion is borne out in studies done in tropical forests of all types throughout the world, with lands of indigenous and traditional peoples offering no exception (Robinson & Bennett 2000b). More specific evidence comes from uncited work done in extractive reserves in Brazil-the same setting in which the authors claim there has been no effect and no available studies. Two studies document local extinction of several species of game animals in extractive reserves due to hunting by rubber tappers (Martins 1993; Calouro 1995). The study Schwartzman and his colleagues call for-comparing densities of game animals in extractive reserves and unhunted forests-has, in fact, been conducted (Martins 1993; Peres 2000; Robinson & Bennett 2000a), and the results demonstrate the overwhelming negative effect of human hunting. And these results come from an extractive reserve with a human population density of one person per square kilometer, a density much lower than that of most other extractive reserves (Martins 1993). The same results have been demonstrated on Indian lands in Central America (Ventocilla et al. 1996), Indian lands in the Amazon (Chase Smith 1996; Alvard 1994; Peres 2000), and in Amazonian mestizo territories (Bodmer et al. 1994). There is simply no doubt that human hunting causes dramatic local reduction in the density of game species and in some cases leads to local extinction. Peres (2000) concludes from an exhaustive study of the effects of hunting at 24 Amazonian sites, including extractive reserves and Indian lands that Subsistence hunting in Amazonia . .. can result in profound changes in the structure of tropical forest vertebrate communities through (a) shifts in the relaPaper submitted February 23, 2000; revised manuscript accepted MaY 3, 2000.