Bird conservation status and cultural values in Indigenous Mexican communities: towards a bioculturally informed conservation policy

Abstract

Background We summarize comparative ethnoornithological data for ten Mexican Indigenous communities, an initial step towards a comprehensive archive of the avian diversity conserved within Mexico’s Indigenous territories. We do so by counting highlighted species listed for bird conservation status on widely recognized “red lists” and their cultural value to build biocultural policies in Mexico for their conservation. Methods Indigenous bird names for each study site were determined to allow calculation of the “Scientific Species Recognition Ratio” (SSRR) for high cultural value birds obtained across communities. This demonstrated patterns of cultural prominence. A matrix of 1275 bird versus seven biocultural values was analysed using a correspondence analysis (InfoStat/L-v2020) to illustrate patterns of concordance between bird conservation status and cultural values. Results This paper contributes to quantitative and qualitative data on the role of ethnoornithology and ethnobiology in biocultural conservation. The areas studied provide refugia for almost 70% of the Mexican avifauna within a fraction of 1% of the national territory, that is 769 bird species recorded for all communities. The global correspondence of regions of biological and linguistic megadiversity is well established, while linguistic diversity is widely accepted as a good proxy for general cultural diversity. Our correspondence analysis explained 81.55% of the variation, indicating a strong relation between cultural importance and bird conservation status. We propose three main categories to establish a bioculturally informed public policy in Mexico for the conservation of what we described as high, medium, and bioculturally prominent bird species all include cultural value in any material or symbolic aspect. High are those species appearing on any threatened list, but also considered in any endemic status, while medium include threatened listed species. The last category included species not necessarily listed on any threat list, but with a wide range of social and cultural uses. We suggest that the concept might be extended to other species of biocultural importance. Conclusions We argue that bird conservation policies should be biocultural, that is they should recognize birds of cultural value on a par with bird species “of special interest” because they are most critical for biodiversity conservation. The desire of local people to protect their traditional community lands and livelihoods can be an effective biodiversity conservation strategy, which should be recognized in national biocultural policies.

Biocultural salient birds: which biological and cultural factors define them?

“…This type of assessments is expected to vary among sites and cultures, as other human groups may utilize, appreciate, and understand in different ways the biological diversity that surrounds them (Jain, 2000;Ladle et al, 2019). Also, variations among avian species might have a differential impact on human appreciation (Alcańtara-Salinas et al, 2022). Other factors that should deserve future investigation include intergenerational changes of attitudes towards nature, human migration, globalization, personal abilities on bird identification, and the modification of species distribution as a consequence of climate fluctuation.…”

“…From the vast diversity of living things, only a fraction is directly and explicitly relevant to human communities (Sousa et al, 2019;Alcańtara-Salinas et al, 2022). Such relevance might be explored through the study of salience, which refers to the properties of things that capture human attention (Berlin et al, 1973;Gosler, 2017).…”