People versus Parks: Can indigenous peoples coexist with tropical forest biodiversity?

Indigenous territories currently account for 54% of all reserves by acreage across all nine Amazonian countries, and overall cover 100 million hectares. Indigenous reserves may therefore play a key role in future climate change scenarios by stemming defor estation and preventing biodiversity erosion. However, these conservation areas invariably lack a rational set of guidelines or a management plan to inform resource use policy. This project aims to develop a sustainable co-management protocol to inform th e use of game vertebrates and other non-timber forest resources by indigenous and other detribalized extractive communities in the Brazilian Amazon. The project will be conducted at two contiguous indigenous reserves along the Rio Xeruã; the Deni Indian R eserve and the Kanamari Indian reserve. These are some of the most remote indigenous reserves in the Brazilian Amazon. Careful logistical planning is therefore essential to the success of this project. Likewise, the sensitive issue of working with indigen ous peoples requires resolving the political and bureaucratic obstacles posed by the many official Brazilian government entities to obtain the proper legal basis on which to carry out the project. With the appropriate permissions in place, however, the pr oject is expected to provide clear scientific rationale and a policy incentive to implement community-based wildlife management programmes in large multiple-use indigenous reserves. This work will thus provide a proof of concept and a blueprint that can b e adapted to protect biodiversity in indigenous reserves and human-occupied parks across the tropics, and will be of interest and use for conservation organizations, park administrations, conservation and tropical biologists, indigenous organizations, and cultural and biological anthropologists.