Report

For my participation in the World Citizenship Program, I interned for the Forest Management Trust (FMT), who work with the Bolivian Sustainable Forestry Project (BOLFOR) to develop sustainable forestry practices.

In 1996, the Bolivian government introduced a new law that granted indigenous communities land for subsistence activities. One requirement of the territorios communical origen (TCO's) is that the local people create a management plan outlining how they will use their land. BOLFOR's operations expanded to help communities design management plans for their forest resources. Currently, they are assisting the people of Salvatierra to develop a timber management plan. This initiative to work with community-based forestry exposed new issues. One, in particular, is hunting. If not managed, hunting can be detrimental. Forest composition can change due to the absence of wildlife, and more importantly, without other alternatives, the people in Salvatierra will not have food.

My internship was to describe how the wildlife community changed over generations and how the people believed that wildlife would change in the future. My background is in wildlife ecology, so I felt knowledgeable about the wildlife issues at stake. I was less familiar with how to conduct interviews, so I did a lot of background preparation to be able to carry out my project. I decided to use pictures to help me communicate. I was not quite fluent in Spanish and even less fluent in Guarayo, the local dialect, so images were an important component of my interviews (see illustrations at bottom right).

Salvatierra is a small town with less then 60 families. To be able to reach Salvatierra you must either be lucky and hitch a ride, or you must get there by bicycle. It took me about one and a half hours to ride in from the nearby village, Urubicha, to Salvatierra. I was lucky because it was the dry season. In the wet season you need to cross two rivers in a canoe. I had to bring food as there were no stores in Salvatierra.

The first time I arrived, I was greeted by just about all of the children in the village. Visitors don't arrive very often and it is a big event when they do. All of the men of the village were working in the forest cutting transects for a forest survey of timber species with BOLFOR. BOLFOR and I went into the forest and they introduced me. Before I left, village musicians played a song for me on the violin. At any given time you can hear people playing the violin, a reminder of the historical Australian Missionaries who helped create Salvatierra many years ago.

I spent over a month interviewing the people about their hunting practices. Some of my plans worked and other ideas did not work. My field assistant, Humberto, helped me to translate into Guarayo. We also went into the forest to talk about the plants that are important to wildlife.

It takes time to gain the confidence of people. This was especially true since I interviewed people about sensitive hunting issues. For example, people did not readily admit that they eat monkeys. I brought a book with me that had images of hunters around the world, and this helped. People realized that monkeys are a delicacy around the world. I also brought photos from my MS work when I investigated the relationship between wildlife and palm trees. I think that my previous experience and my understanding of hunting issues helped to gain peopleís confidence.

I learned that the people are concerned about the wildlife populations. It is more difficult to hunt now than it was in the past, and fish are not easy to catch. Living there I know that food was limited. It was obvious that people were hunting and from a biological perspective, some species, in particular, were probably being overhunted.

I had a very good relationship with Mary Lou. I stayed in a tent nearby her house and she took good care of me. Mary Lou wanted me to experience Salvatierra and to know her culture. We went out to gather firewood one day. She also took me to the river and showed me where to bathe.

I think my biggest failure in Salvatierra was a project that I wanted to do with the women. I brought a Polaroid camera with me, so I could take a photo of the families I interviewed as a thank you. It is sometimes difficult to send photos from the US and I have learned, over the years, that people get upset when travelers do not send the photos that they promise.

Instead of me taking the photos, I decided to give the women a chance to do a collective project and make a scrapbook of Salvatierran culture. I thought that this was a nice gesture. I bought supplies to create a scrapbook and talked about my plans with the president of the woman's association. I was so afraid as coming across as a dominating North American that I did not enforce any rules and ultimately the project did not work out. The power of the camera took over. The president of the women's association took photos of her friends and she didn't want to share the materials that I bought from the scrapbook.

In hindsight, I could not blame her, I would have done the same thing if I never was given the opportunity to have a camera or nice materials to make a scrapbook. In the end, a schoolteacher offered to help the women put the book together after I left.

When I left Salvatierra, I left friends. I was the first NGO worker who actually stayed in the community for more than a few days. I think that this made a difference. I partook in many different festivals from birthday parties to the independence day celebration in Bolivia. I was amazed at how much the people of Salvatierra can party. For two days, straight, people were playing violins and drums, and dancing.

The strangest aspect for me was that I could not easily communicate with the children or many of the women. The women are embarrassed to speak in Spanish and many children do not learn Spanish until they are older. For me, this was difficult. When I began to learn some Guarayo, I realized that the children were constantly teaching me how to speak in Guaryayo.

I will never forget one day that two children took me to the river to fish. They taught me words and showed me how they make little toy canoes with leaves. Then we went over to the side of the river where they grabbed a small leaf ... and licked it and stuck it on their ears and my ears. Another leaf served as a necklace. This natural jewelry made me realize that I did the same thing as a child ... and that maybe ... we aren't so different.

Photo Gallery

Salvatierra villager, Mary Lou, carrying firewood back from the forest.

Mary Lou cooked a traditional meal – fish baked in banana leaves.

My assistant, Humberto, making a mold of a Tapir track.

Baltazar killed one of his domestic pigs for the independence day festival.

Tapir and Agouti for dinner.

I showed this photo of a White-lipped Peccary, eating palm tree fruits, to the villagers to explain my previous wildlife experience to them.

The drawings:
Above and below – Some of my land-use activity cards. I located a local artist, who drew people's activities. These cards I used when I discussed land-use activities to see how important hunting was in people's daily lives and how they believe their activities will change in the future.

Banana palm and oranges.

This drawing represents the extraction of non-timber products such as honey and medicinal plants.