A response to Gray et al. about the decline of hunting by indigenous peoples in Ecuadorian Amazonia
- Authors
- Sir?n, Anders Henrik
- Format
- Article
- Status
- publishedVersion
- Description
A response to Gray et al. about the decline of hunting by indigenous peoples in Ecuadorian Amazonia A longitudinal study by Gray et al. (2015) conducted in indigenous and mestizo communities in Ecuadorian Amazonia in the years 2001 and 2012, revealed a decrease in the harvest of various wild animal and plant resources, including game hunting. The authors attribute this to changes in the ''regional-scale social and economic context, including urbanization and the expansion of government infrastructure and services''. This conclusion may, however, be a bit premature. Some even more drastic changes in hunting behaviour were revealed by another, more detailed, longitudinal study conducted in an indigenous community in Ecuadorian Amazonia over a similar time period (Sir?n and Wilkie, in press). This study was based on over 1600 interviews, conducted on a biweekly to bimonthly basis with hunters in a representative sample of households. The results showed that between the periods 1999?2001 and 2008?2009, the hunting effort, measured as kilometres per year walked by hunters, decreased by over a third. The number of hunted prey per year was halved, whereas the mean prey biomass was doubled and, accordingly, the total biomass hunted per year remained virtually constant. Although the decrease in hunting effort partly may have been caused by changes in the general social and economic context, similar to what was proposed by Gray et al. (2015), there was also evidence that a major, and very specific, cause of changed hunting practices was that the cost of ammunition increased drastically in early 2008 because of a 300% tax imposed by the Ecuadorian Government. The short term response to this was that hunters quit hunting prey that was too small to be worth the new increased cost of the ammunition. However, there were also indications that the long term response may turn out different. A time series recording the type of guns used beginning in the month before ammunition cost increased and continuing during the subsequent 13 months, showed that the proportion of prey killed with muzzle-loaders increased with time. Muzzle-loaders are overall less efficient than cartridge shotguns, but their ammunition is considerably cheaper than shotgun cartridges, implying that many small prey species which became unprofitable to hunt with a cartridge shotgun, continued to be profitable to hunt with a muzzle-loader. It is very likely that the increased cost of ammunition was a major factor affecting hunting practices also in the communities studied by Gray et al. (2015). There is also reason to question the extent to which Gray et al.'s (2015) conclusions actually can be supported by survey questions covering just the very recent past, such as the ''past month'' or ''most recent hunt''. Unless the timing of such interviews is carefully designed ? e.g., evenly or randomly spaced out over at least a full year ? the results are likely to be heavily influenced by seasonal bias. Although there are good reasons to believe that hunting practices are affected by natural seasonal variability, such as the weather, or the availability of migratory fish as an alternative food source, my own field data from a Kichwa community in Ecuadorian Amazonia revealed that wildlife harvests were relatively stable throughout most of the year, but peaked sharply during school vacations (Sir?n, 2004, p. 200). The exact time of the school vacations varies from year to year, and so does the timing of climatic seasons and fish migrations; this means that conducting interviews on the same dates in different years does not guarantee freedom from seasonal bias. It is quite plausible that the regional-scale social and economic context, including urbanization and the expansion of government infrastructure and services, contributes to decreased extraction of wildlife among indigenous peoples in Ecuadorian Amazonia, just as Gray et al. (2015) conclude, and their extensive dataset has a great potential to contribute to improving our understanding of such interactions. In order to draw firm conclusions about this, however, additional data and more refined analyses are still required.
Universidad Estatal Amaz?nica
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280022435_A_response_to_Gray_et_al_about_the_decline_of_hunting_by_indigenous_peoples_in_Ecuadorian_Amazonia
- Publication Year
- 2015
- Language
- eng
- Topic
- A RESPONSE TO GRAY ET AL
DECLINE OF HUNTING
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
ECUADORIAN AMAZONIA
- Repository
- Repositorio SENESCYT
- Rights
- openAccess
- License
- openAccess