As interest in biodiversity conservation grows, the livelihoods and cultures of rainforest inhabitants who have made a living by hunting wild animals are threatened. Mutual understanding between local peoples and conservation authorities is essential to solve this issue. This also implies the need for the collaboration of different knowledge systems—indigenous and local knowledge and science. We will promote “coproduction research” that builds on an equal relationship between the two stakeholders and develops locally-based wildlife management systems for sustainable hunting.

Why do this study?

Rainforest mammals support both forest biodiversity and rainforest peoples' lives and cultures. Over the past 30 years, however, rainforests have faced a sharp increase in hunting pressure and declines in wildlife populations. As international attention was drawn to this “wildmeat crisis,” rainforest governments established protected areas and imposed strict hunting restrictions. But this has caused restrictions even on local subsistence hunting, provoking conflicts with conservation officials.

Furthermore, we believe this problem is a mutual incomprehension between Science and Indigenous and local knowledge regarding wildlife management. Conservation officials emphasise explicit management based on scientific evidence. Local people, on the other hand, are considered to have managed implicitly based on indigenous and local knowledge of wildlife gained through years of hunting practice. Although the two knowledge systems have much in common in practice, there is a significant gap in underlying philosophy and worldviews. So, a management system based solely on the knowledge of one is not considered sustainable or fair by the other. To fundamentally solve the wildmeat crisis, Science and ILK must develop a mutual understanding and a locally-based wildlife management system incorporating subsistence hunting.

What we want to do

To address the wildmeat crisis, the project aims to introduce wildlife management systems to enable subsistence hunting in five sites of the world's three major rainforest regions. We take a “coproduction research” approach, where conservation governments and local people plan, conduct and evaluate research on an equal footing. We work with local people and conservation officers to gather hunting-related ILK, develop harvest-based wildlife monitoring, and create sustainable hunting management systems. We will also expand the network of local people living in each study site over the three rainforest regions and share their initiatives using photographs and video letters.

Our coproduction research, which assumes no superiority of science over ILK, will create five different management systems in the five areas. The detailed descriptions of building the five management systems will help verify the effectiveness of the coproduction approach in environmental issues.