Mazahua Ethnobotany: Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Management, and Local People Subsistence

Abstract

This study documents the Mazahua ecological knowledge of plants, their nomenclature and classification, and their role in subsistence of people in a village of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, Mexico. We registered 213 useful plant species within the territory studied. Prunus serotina, Rubus liebmannii, and Crataegus mexicana were the main species providing wild fruits gathered by the Mazahua people, whereas Brassica campestris, Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum, Chenopodium berlandieri, and Amaranthus hybridus were the principal non-crop greens locally consumed. Extraction of medicinal plants is low but gathering of flowers of Ternstroemia spp. for commercialization involves practices that endanger local populations of these plants. All households of the village make use of fuelwood, mainly of pine and oak species; in addition, they practice livestock, mostly extensive free raising of cows and sheep, but commonly people gather some wild and weedy plants for feeding their animals. Spatial and temporal availability of useful plants were investigated to determine their abundance and relation to their role in people subsistence throughout the year. The information was compared with data on extraction rates of the main useful plants to analyze conditions for sustainable use of plant resources. Nearly half of the territory of the village was covered by forest areas, including different types of pine-oak-fir forests and riparian vegetation. The other half of the territory has been transformed, including agricultural areas and secondary scrub grasslands. Although the village studied (Francisco Serrato, Michoacan) is part of the core zone and the buffer zone of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, during the period of 2001–2006 its territory suffered a drastic deforestation caused by the influence of outsider organized crime. Such action decreased the forest area of the community nearly 350 ha of the Abies forest. The highest diversity of useful trees and shrubs was found in the riparian vegetation, where impact of extraction is relatively low. Agricultural areas lack arboreal vegetation but have the highest diversity of herbaceous useful plants mainly including weedy plants gathered for human food as greens and fodder. Pine-oak associations have intermediate diversity of useful trees and shrubs and herbs but are the main reservoirs of biomass of useful plants and are also the most used areas by people. Non-timber plant resources are relatively abundant and extraction rates did not appear to endanger their populations. However, the extraction of Ternstroemia lineata flowers for commercialization as medicine, and fuelwood of Pinus pseudostrobus, Quercus spp., Abies religiosa, Alnus spp., and Comarostaphylis spp. used and commercialized, may represent serious risks to sustainable maintenance of their populations. In addition, the timber extraction to which the forest region has been subject for decades severely threatens the integrity of the forest ecosystems of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. The bases for sustainable use of forests are the traditional forest management practices and some aspects about these practices are discussed.