XIII. Urbanization and Local Knowledge

Human perceptions vary between rural and urban environments, determining degree to which people are able to coexist with biodiversity. It is important to identify sociodemographic factors that determine these local perceptions to adjust with conservation strategies in recognition of particular conditions of different human communities. Effect of urban or rural location where people live and knowledge and perceptions about indigenous plants has led to transformative changes. Urbanization leads to primary e.g., removal of existing vegetation and construction of urban infrastructure and secondary e.g., habitat loss, fragmentation and isolation, climatic changes, pollution of air, water, and soil, processes that represent many challenges to persistence of non-human species.. All ecosystems are affected by same broad factors, such as climate, substrate, resident organisms, relief, and history. Aboriginals of Kullu District of Himachal Pradesh have preserved the cultivation habit along with rural means of earning livelihood with little transformation. 

Bushy Lake is located within the lower American River floodplain, Sacramento, CA, in the sovereign territory of the Nissenan, Maidu and Miwok peoples. The Bushy Lake Eco-Cultural Restoration Project, initiated in 2015, has a primary goal of restoring culturally significant plants and wildlife habitat in a highly disturbed urban riparian landscape. Our hypothesis is that culturally significant plants are fire resilient due to thousands of years of Indigenous Traditional Fire Management, and provide resiliency to wildfires on site. A 2021 wildfire  burned the entire site to the water’s edge. Monitoring vegetation response to wildfire enable  us to monitor and test  fire resiliency. We will present the results of our post-fire monitoring.  Our goal is to maintain traditional stewardship practices, land access for materials and tending, restore cultural burning practices, prohibit use of herbicides and pesticides, and promote healthy and just relationships with land and non-human relations.

Southern Jalisco, Mexico is facing fast environmental changes, due mainly to the deforestation of temperate and dry forests to grow blue agave and avocado. This makes it more difficult for local people, and specially children, to access the local forests which is leading not just to an enormous loss of biodiversity but also associated local traditional knowledge. Against these challenges, 52 primary-school aged children participate in an extracurricular program, learning some ethnobotanical tools to record the local knowledge associated with the wild plants in their communities and helping to build a school herbarium. Those activities have promoted both spaces for children to learn about their wild plants and opportunities for dialogue among the different generations. Since the start of the program and with the collaboration of parents and grandparents, it has recorded a total of 68 species with different uses (e.g. food, medicine, firewood, decoration, cattle feed and toys).

While the guineafowl is endemic to Africa, the species has been domesticated widely across the globe and holds cultural import in various communities. It has generated both fame and infamy: guineafowl eggs and meat are prized in folk cuisine, and the birds often serve as exceptional "alarms" on predator-susceptible farms; however, so too are the birds' known for wild temperament, aggressive behavior, and shrill (seemingly constant) noise. The latter has not daunted their keeping in the United States. While the birds are generally deemed an "exotic" species far different from the average backyard chicken, they are nevertheless a popular bird among American keepers. Based on ethnographic research conducted with guineafowl keepers, this talk examines what guineafowl reveal about human perceptions of domestic birds. I examine both historical and contemporary keeper understandings of the bird. Ultimately, I seek to explore how human relationships with guineafowl expose the precarious status of birds, particularly domesticated birds, in the United States.