ABSTRACT. The spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta), the most common large carnivore in the highlands and lowlands of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, has occupied both a scavenging niche and a predatory position at the top of the food chain. My own field explorations on this animal and the observations of travelers document its long and ambivalent association with people in the Horn of Africa. Spotted hyenas in this region have mostly lived in anthropogenic contexts rather than, as in East Africa, on wildlife. Tolerated as efficient sanitation units, hyenas have removed garbage and carrion from towns. They have also destroyed livestock, killed people, and eaten corpses. Famine, epidemics, and armed conflict have provided opportunities for unbridled anthropophagy. The past and present coming together of human and hyena in this multiethnic region can be viewed as a vestige of a primeval African ecological relationship that dates far back in prehistory. Biological processes offer a deeper framework than culture with which to grasp the inherent contradiction of the hyena/human relationship past and present.
One of the most isolated islands on Earth, Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean stands as a modern-day ‘morality play’ of the consequences of environmental abuse. This tiny piece of land on the fringe of the tropics, emerged as an island through volcanic action some 1.5 million years ago, and acquired its biota mainly by long-distance dispersal from the west. Rodrigues was not inhabited by any people until 1691, and since then has always been administered from Mauritius which lies 650 km to the west.Burning, browsing, and woodcutting, have almost completely removed the indigenous forest. Close to a third of the native plant species have disappeared, and another third are on the brink of extinction. Giant land-tortoises, sea-turtles, and the Dugong, have vanished. Only two of the ten native species of land-birds survive. The endemic Solitaire was killed off even before the human population started to grow. Forest removal opened new habitats for introduced plants and animals, some of which are now highly invasive pests.Human impact on Rodrigues has gone beyond biotic effects. Cultivation of row-crops on the hilly terrain, and the keeping of domesticated animals in excessive numbers, led to the loss of most of the topsoil by the beginning of the twentieth century. Soil removal and compaction drastically modified the hydrology of the island, and silt deposition in the lagoon has contributed to fish decline. The inherent vulnerability of the native biota, the twin hazards of cyclones and droughts that befall the island, and demographic pressure, have all exacerbated the rate and degree of resource degradation.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. THE current rural settlement in the highlands of Peru and Boliva reflects an administrative fiat imposed on the Andean landscape by an alien culture four centuries ago. The dwellings of the indigenes were dispersed, but between 1570 and 1575 the Spanish viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, ordered their concentration in more than a thousand compact villages known as reducciones.1 A million or more Indians were torn from their homes and resettled in tight clusters so that it would be easier for the Spanish authorities to control and acculturate them.2 Subsequent rural settlements in the central Andes developed mainly as offshoots of the original reducciones; most post-Toledan villages resembled the ones built in the early 1570s.The reduccion system is one example of landscape design imposed by bureaucratic decree. Three prime geographical components can be identified in this type of landscape design: the characteristics of the physical environment, the cultural configuration of the habitants, and the goals of the imposing authority or group. The native peoples of the Andes had adapted to the mountainous terrain, the highly compressed climatic zones, and the availability of local resources. That finely tuned man-land adjustment culminated in the Incan empire which ended when the Spaniards conquered Peru between 1532 and 1533. The Spaniards were self-consciously the bearers of the Mediterranean variety of Western civilization. One aspect of Andean society and culture that they altered was the settlement system.Mindful of the role of the past in molding the present, we examine the results of the implementation of that Spanish edict on a portion of the high Andes. To examine the fate of the European-imposed nuclei, we focus on the southwestern portion of the department of Cuzco. This rugged, remote zone of the southern Peruvian highlands encompasses nearly 14,000 square kilometers. A plateau between 3,500 and 4,200 meters above sea level dominates the area; in some places mountains rise as high as 5,271 meters (Fig. 1). The
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