The knowledge of the Amazonian inhabitants could improve the control of the wildlife on the Amazon, according to a study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and the Department of Animal Health and Anatomy of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), in northeastern Spain.
Experts from institutions in Spain, Brazil, Peru, the United States and the United Kingdom have participated in the research, published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.
The Amazon is home to some 390,000 million trees and has one of the greatest biodiversity in the world, but at the current rate of deforestation 27% of the Amazon rainforest will be without forests by 2030.
These data show the urgency of having accurate and up-to-date estimates of the abundance of fauna populations to improve the conservation of biodiversity.
The worker compares the abundance values of 91 wild species, obtained after traveling more than 7,000 kilometers of linear transects (analytical systems), with the knowledge of 291 inhabitants of 17 areas of the Amazon.
The results show a high similarity between both methods, indicating that local knowledge is as reliable as the conventional scientific methods currently in use.
Researchers have even observed that local ecological knowledge is much more powerful than line transects when it comes to specific species that are rarely seen in their habitat, such as nocturnal, cryptic, less abundant or less hunted.
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The main author of the study and ICTA-UAB researcher, Franciany Braga-Pereira, assures that “the perception of local people is multisensory: it involves hearing, smell and other indirect visual signals.”
According to Braga-Pereira, this knowledge also includes “different scales of time and space”, since the local population has contact with the forest “throughout the year and throughout the territory of their community.”
In this sense, the researcher from the Department of Animal Health and Anatomy of the UAB and co-author of the study Pedro Mayor remarks that “the locals walk through the jungle at night and during the day, while the linear transects are usually done only during the day” .
Mayor also affirms that this knowledge “implies a greater number of hours of the local inhabitants dedicated to observing in the jungle, but widely distributed over time and as they carry out daily activities.”
The authors assure that incorporating this knowledge into wildlife monitoring projects could considerably improve the quality of science and contribute to the sustainability of the planet’s tropical forests.
“Ecological knowledge is more accurate than ten years of conventional scientific monitoring for animal abundance in the Amazon,” emphasizes Braga-Pereira.
The researchers say that this method empowers local communities, which are the main stakeholders interested in better managing their own natural resources, and developing successful conservation initiatives.
In addition, they consider that local knowledge could be used despite financial restrictions or the appearance of international or national crises, which other study methods face.
“A great example of this we have seen with movement restrictions during the recent covid pandemic, in which many protected natural areas were closed to external researchers and the only possible wildlife monitoring was that carried out by the local population of independently, ”says Braga-Pereira.
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