Diversidad de mamíferos y participación local en la conservación en el Gran Chaco Boliviano

Abstract

Introduction: Local participation, be it passive or active, has had variable degrees of success in long-term conservation processes. We describe an alliance in the Bolivian Gran Chaco between indigenous people—seeking land and resource rights, and improved livelihoods—and a conservation organization—pursuing biodiversity and wildlife conservation—that successfully proposed, and subsequently managed, a vast national park comprising one of the best preserved and most extensive areas of tropical dry forest in the world. We explain the geographical, political / social and biological contexts (relative to mammals) of this partnership in order to encourage collaboration elsewhere in Latin America.The Gran Chaco’s varied habitats support a diversity of unique species, but like other tropical dry forests, it is suffering severe pressure from the expansion of industrial agriculture and hunting. Created in 1996, the Kaa-Iya National Park covers 34,000 km2 in Bolivia. Extensive and participatory ecological and socio-economic studies, combined with an intense consultation process, resulted in a zonification that provides areas for agriculture and resource exploitation by private land-owners and by indigenous peoples—Ayoreode, Chiquitano, and Isoseño-Guaraní—neighboring the park. Subsequent participatory research and training in the park and on neighboring indigenous communal lands established a cadre of indigenous “parabiologists.â€Methodology: Research by joint parabiologist-biologist teams on mammals included efforts to document the status of the Chacoan guanaco Lama guanicoe; research on the ecology of the jaguar Panthera onca and its prey; conservation and use of landscape species (including the endemic Chacoan peccary Catagonus wagneri); resolution of conflicts between humans and wildlife; a fire ecology study to understand the structural changes in the landscape; and a binational Bolivia-Paraguay effort to survey mammals.Results: Isoseño-Guaraní communities, in response to the findings on guanacos and Chacoan peccaries, proposed and adopted a ban on hunting these two endangered species. With respect to game species, hundreds of hunters participated in a multi-year self-monitoring program. After analyzing the data, the communities adopted temporary hunting bans on lowland tapirs Tapirus terrestris and white-lipped peccaries Tayassu pecari, management plans for the sustainable commercial utilization (skins) of collared peccary Pecari tajacu, and defined communal reserves with no hunting. The fire ecology study found that traditional fire management by indigenous communities maintained the most diverse savanna habitats.Discussion and conclusions: A successful partnership must recognize that the interests or general objectives of the actors may vary, explicitly identify common ground, and collaborate to promote objectives that coincide or that complement each other. Through participatory research and formal training activities (including an 8 month, 13 module certification program), the parabiologists developed their own research projects, analyzed data they had collected, presented the results to their communities and wider audiences, and worked with the communities to manage and conserve wildlife resources and communal lands. Several have become leaders of their communities and directed local development projects. The benefits of participatory conservation and alliances between indigenous peoples and conservation organizations therefore far exceed the immediate outcomes of databases and publications on wildlife, providing technical and human resources as well as personal trust and institutional collaboration mechanisms as a base for long-term landscape conservation. Nevertheless continuity depends on action and financial support, and partners must strive to develop new allies that include in the Kaa-Iya case local and national government entities, private landowners, and business such as the natural gas industry.Key words: Bolivia, Gran Chaco, indigenous people, tropical dry forest, parabiologist.