Hunting practices among the Awá-Guajá: towards a long-term analysis of sustainability in an Amazonian indigenous community

Abstract

Indigenous Reserves have played an indispensable role in maintaining forest areas in the Neotropics. In the Amazon there is a clear correlation between these reserves and the presence of forest cover; however, the simple presence of uninterrupted vegetation is no guarantee for the conservation of biodiversity, especially where hunting is practiced. This study describes hunting practices among the Awá-Guajá people from 1993 through 1994, also identifying sociocultural, technological, and demographic changes that have influenced their resource acquisition strategies over the last two decades. The data was obtained through ethnographic fieldwork, recording 78 days of foraging returns, with follow-up visits through 2010. This work provides useful information for an effective diachronic analysis of hunting in this community, by revealing foraging patterns of the early to mid-1990s, and describing community transformations over the last two decades in this locale.

Hunting and Monitoring: Community-Based Research in Xerente Indigenous Land, Brazilian Cerrado

“…Even when used, it was usually combined with rifles, with a single exception. The adoption of shotguns by Xerente hunters follows the same pattern found in Neotropical regions (Jerozolimski & Peres, 2003) and has been observed among other indigenous groups (Constantino et al, 2008;Prado et al, 2012). Shepard et al (2012) stated that firearms have become widely available to several indigenous territories in the Amazon, and, despite making hunting more efficient, has changed the relationship between indigenous peoples and wildlife.…”

Ride, shoot, and call: wildlife use among contemporary urban hunters in Três Fronteiras, Brazilian Amazon

“…Most of the Amazon Basin's forests are inhabited by indigenous people (Schwartzman et al 2000, Nepstad et al 2006) who rapidly join the global marketplace and are able to acquire modern weapons and tools (guns, steel tools, fishing gear, chainsaws) and motorized transport. As a result, scientific research on bushmeat in the Amazon has focused on assessing hunting practices and their effects on biodiversity conservation (Ayres and Ayres 1979, Bodmer et al 1997, Emídio-Silva 1998, Lopes and Ferrari 2000, Peres 2001, Zapata-Ríos 2001, Bonaudo et al 2005, da Silva et al 2005, Levi et al 2009, Parry et al 2009, Prado et al 2012, Shepard et al 2012. There has been a limited number of studies dealing with the economics and social underpinnings of Amazonian hunting (Read et al 2010, Iwamura et al 2014.…”

A Framework for Assessing Impacts of Wild Meat Hunting Practices in the Tropics

“…In a review of hunting in Central Africa, Abernethy et al (2013) stated that village hunters typically travel less than 10 km from the village on daily trips, and an ongoing database pertaining to hunting of wild terrestrial species across the globe provides a mean per-village hunting territory of 301km 2 (SE ± 78 km 2 , n = 66 villages) for this region, which approximates a circle of radius 9.8 km (calculated based on Ingram et al 2015). However, where hunters set up temporary forest camps, hunting may occur at distances up to 50 km from permanent settlements, allowing hunters to access relatively non-depleted areas without incurring daily transport costs (Hayashi 2008;Prado et al 2012;Abernethy et al 2013;Van Vliet et al 2014). The ability to leave permanent settlements for extended periods of time may therefore have a significant impact on an individual's opportunities for hunting and thus their potential response to altered economic circumstances.…”