Comparé aux hommes, les femmes connaissent mieux les plantes comestibles et celles utilisées dans la pharmacopée et ont moins de connaissance sur les plantes utilisées dans la construction. Les données d'interview ont montré Research AbstractEthnobotanical studies often underestimate or misrepresent impacts of age and gender on individual ethnobotanical knowledge. This paper compares two common methodologies, participant observation and key-informant interviews, to examine the variation of ethnobotanical knowledge across age and gender in three communities in rural southwest Niger. We compared lists of plants mentioned in interviews as food, fodder, construction and medicine, to lists compiled from observations of daily activities. Compared to men, women reported more edible plants, different medicinal plants, and less detailed information on construction plants. Interview data indicated ethnobotanical knowledge increased with age. However, in observations youth ate a greater diversity of food plants and identified and ranked fodder species more quickly than adults. This paper supports previous research on age and gender effects on ethnobotanical knowledge and critiques common research methods and assumptions. We advocate for mixed-method approaches to gather more nuanced understandings of ethnobotanical knowledge. RésuméLes études, souvent sous-estiment ou présentent mal les impacts de l'âge et du genre sur la connaissance ethnobotanique individuelle. Cet article compare deux méthodes: l'observation et l'interview afin d'examiner la variation de la connaissance ethnobotanique en fonction de l'âge et du genre dans trois communautés rurales du sud-ouest du Niger. Nous avons comparé les listes des plantes utilisées dans l'alimentation, le fourrage, la construction et la pharmacopée, à l'issue de l'interview aux listes établies sur la base des observations d'activités quotidiennes.

This paper examines the process and outcome of participatory methods for stakeholder identification. We used focus group style participatory methodology to engage local residents in identifying key sub-groups relevant to conservation in Boumba, Niger. We then conducted a quantitative pictorial recognition study to measure the diversity of local useful plant knowledge across groups. The community identified six gender and age-class groupings relevant to the study. The effect of a participant's gender, socially-defined age class or the interaction of the two factors on the number of plants recognized varied by plant use. Medicinal plant knowledge was highest among elders. Food plant knowledge of food plants increased with age for women only. Where as the interaction of age and gender was strongest on fodder plant knowledge, where mid-aged men scored highest. We reflect on the impact that heterogeneity of local botanical knowledge has on our understanding of local natural resource use and the strengths of using a participatory approach to identifying the stakeholder groups which underlie this heterogeneity.

There is a pressing need to find both locally and globally relevant tools to measure and compare biodiversity patterns. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is important to biodiversity monitoring, but has a contested role in preliminary biodiversity assessments. We examined rapid participatory rural appraisal (rPRA) (a tool commonly used for local needs assessments) as an alternative to surveys of vascular plants conducted by people with local knowledge. We used rPRA to determine the local-knowledge consensus on the average richness, diversity, and height of local grasses and trees in three habitats surrounding Boumba, Niger, bordering Park-W. We then conducted our own vascular plant surveys to collect information on plant richness, abundance, and structure. Using a qualitative ranking, we compared TEK-based assessments of diversity patterns with our survey-based assessments. The TEK-based assessments matched survey-based assessments on measures of height and density for grasses and trees and tree richness. The two assessments correlated poorly on herb richness and Simpson's D value for both trees and grasses. Plant life form and gender of the participant affected the way diversity patterns were described, which highlights the usefulness of TEK in explaining local realities and indicates limitations of using TEK as a large-scale assessment tool. Our results demonstrate that rPRA can serve to combine local-knowledge inquiry with scientific study at a cost lower than vascular plant surveys and demonstrates a useful blunt tool for preliminary biodiversity assessment.

A long-term study was conducted to explore the possibility of using traditional rain-fed systems for growing domesticated Ziziphus mauritiana (so-called Pomme du Sahel) in the Sahel. Five varieties, Gola, Ben Gurion, Seb, Umran and Kaithli, were grafted on six rootstocks of Z. mauritiana from various agroecological zones of Niger. Trees were planted inside microcatchments at 8 × 8 m spacing. Over a period of six years, the variety Umran gave the highest fruit yield (3600 kg·ha−1) and the lowest fruit yield was documented for variety Seb (1970 kg·ha−1). Individual fruit weight ranged from 25.8 g for ‘Umran’ to 9.5 g for ‘Seb’. The rootstocks had no effect on average fruits yields and fruit size. There was a significant linear correlation between fruit yield and annual rainfall. In a rainy year (680 mm), the average yield of the five varieties was 7580 kg·ha−1. The results of the current study indicate that dry land plantations of Pomme du Sahel can guarantee food security during dry years in the Sahel. However, further studies are required to evaluate the economic feasibility of this system.

Although there is a pressing need for conservation in Africa and a push for such actions to be directed by the community, there is still much conflict both in academia and on the ground regarding the success and methods of community-based conservation. Employing key-informant interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation, we look at how one community has perceived the conservation actions in their village, Boumba, Niger, and the neighbouring national park, Park-W. This study examines local perceptions of the goals, priorities and methods of conservation in Park-W and the Boumba region. We demonstrate that while participants expressed positive alignment with perceived conservation goals, they did not agree with conservation priorities and felt strongly against the methods.  Reframing conservation discourse in the terms of sustainable-use or adaptive management may serve to help translate much of the conservation ethic to local realities. We argue that for local conservation to be culturally sustainable, programmers of conservation must engage the community on their own terms, and recognize the value of local perceptions.