Use and knowledge of the razor-billed curassow pauxi tuberosa (spix, 1825) (galliformes, cracidae) by a riverine community of the oriental amazonia, brazil

Flávio B Barros,Henrique M Pereira,Luís Vicente

doi:10.1186/1746-4269-7-1

Flávio B Barros, Henrique M Pereira + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-7-1

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Abstract

In the Amazonian basin, the human populations that traditionally inhabit the forest use its natural resources in various ways. One example is the local fauna which, among several other uses, is an important source of protein. The general aim of our study was to investigate the importance of hunting to the lives of the Amazonian riverine communities and to identify the multiple uses and knowledge about the hunted animals. In this article we focused the study on the razor-billed curassow Pauxi tuberosa, a Cracidae of significant value to the studied community. The investigation was conducted in the "Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve", a Brazilian Conservation Unit located at the Altamira municipality, in the state of Pará. We used an ethnoecological approach, which included participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Our results show that the razor-billed curassow is used by the "Riozinho do Anfrísio" local population mainly as food, but it also fulfils secondary functions, with the feathers being used as a domestic tool and as magic-religious symbol, some organs as traditional medicine, and some chicks even being raised as pets. Our study also revealed that the traditional ecological knowledge of the riverines about their environment is considerably large, and that the local biodiversity provides various ecosystem services.

Highlights

Animals have long been used by humans for the most diverse purposes
To a significant part of the Brazilian population, and in particular to the Amazonian riverine communities, animal resources represent an important source of protein and traditional medicine, since these populations are isolated and depend primarily on the natural resources obtained directly from
The observations and the data collected in the present study suggest that in the “Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve” the use of these faunistic resources mainly as food, and for domestic, medicinal and magic-religious purposes - appears to happen in a sustainable way

Summary

Introduction

Animals have long been used by humans for the most diverse purposes. In the last decade, the different ways in which the faunistic resources are used by traditional human cultures have become a significant subject of investigation in Brazil [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] and other countries [11,12,13,14], due to their overall importance to conservation issues. The family includes fifty large bird species that inhabit tropical and subtropical forests, with few species being found in open areas [24]. It is the most threatened bird family of the Americas, mostly due to habitat destruction and hunting [25,26]. Hatchlings suffer high mortality for the first year of life and only reach maturity after the third year [26,27] These birds are considered important bioindicators of the ecosystems’ health because they need large breeding territories and are major seed dispersers, acting as restorative agents of the tropical forest ecosystems [25,26,28,29]. In many American regions, overhunting caused the decrease of various Cracidae populations and the local extinction of some species [12,30]

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