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Tropical Forest Hunting

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Monitoring Tropical Forest Hunting: The experience of Zoro people in southwest Mato Grosso, Brazil.

Lara Rosana Neres Diniz1
1Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago, lneres2@uic.edu

1. Introduction

Indigenous people in the Amazon basin largely get their livelihood through agriculture and natural resource extraction. Among these, hunting is a socioeconomical activity that has important meanings for these communities (Souza-Mazurek et al., 2000; Mendes-Oliveira et al, 2004; Strong, 2010). The game animals have a high protein content that even surpasses other foods that are commonly eaten by traditional communities, such as fish meat and cassava flour. Beyond the purpose of consumption, hunting activity is embedded in the culture of many communities, participating in the mystical and spiritual relationships of those people (Ayres, 1991; Peres, 2001,2006;

To balance the subsistence needs of indigenous communities with the potential threat posed by hunting activity, it becomes necessary to have knowledge about the sustainable …show more content…

Most hunters claimed that hunting events if happened many times a week, as practiced before, consumes time that could be used for other profitable activities, such as collecting Brazil nuts that are brought to the city to be sold. Therefore, these influences have clearly reduced the hunting activity in the area. On the other hand, the monitoring could also register invasions of illegal hunters of adjacent areas, such as farmers, or loggers that enter in the land to practice illegal logging (Fearnside, 2006). This registered information, with the help of the community was protocolled as a document and complaint to the authorities to increase the protection in the Zoro Indigenous

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