UH gets natural resources grant
The research team will explore ways of managing land by indigenous peoples
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.65 million grant to University of Hawaii researchers to study how indigenous people manage resources.
"We know that indigenous and other local peoples have many ways of managing their resources," said Kirsten Silvius, a researcher with UH Manoa's Environmental Center, in a press release.
"These 'systems' are not always formalized in the way modern-day wildlife managers or conservation biologists formalize them. Rather, they are expressed in the beliefs, practices and social structures of the societies itself. For example, in many Amazonian societies, shamans and other spiritual leaders make decisions about how many animals should be killed during a hunt, and when the hunt should take place."
Silvius and Jose Fragoso, a UH-Manoa professor of botany, will be using the money to study biodiversity dynamics on indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon.
Their research will focus on hunting practices by the Macuxi ethnic group in the state of Roraima, Brazil. The 4 1/2-year project involves several partner institutions, including Syracuse University and the State University of New York in Syracuse, N.Y.; Pitzer College in California; the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and the Indigenous Council of Roraima.
Fragoso and Silvius have worked with wildlife ecology and conservation issues in South and Central America since the 1980s, and began similar work in Hawaii last year.
"Why institute a completely new management system when you can adapt a traditional system that fits in beautifully with the local culture and is also congruent with Western scientific forms of management?" added Fragoso. "There are many examples of such functioning practices in Hawaii itself, from the ahupuaa system to traditional fishing seasons."
Fragoso and Silvius, a husband-and-wife research team, were recruited to come to UH-Manoa from the State University of New York in August 2004 by David Duffy of the Pacific Studies Cooperative Unit, of which Fragoso is now deputy director.