Social science research and conservation management in the interior Borneo: unravelling past and present interactions of people and forests

The Culture and Conservation Research Program in Kayan Mentarang National Park, East Kalimantan, constitutes a unique interdisciplinary engagement in central Borneo that lasted for six years (1991-97). Based on original ethnographic, ecological, and historical data, this volume comprehensively describes the people and the environment of this region and makes a rare contribution to the understanding of past and present interactions between people and forests in central Borneo. Kayan Mentarang has thus become one of the ethnographically best known protected areas in Southeast Asia. By pointing at the interface between research and forest management, this book offers tools for easing the antagonism between applied and scholarly research, and building much needed connections across fields of knowledge

Indonesia

Le n°11 de Moussons est un numéro thématique consacré à l'Indonésie

Diversity of locally useful tropical forest wild-plants as a function of species richness and informant culture

Different conservation values and perspectives can lead to divergent conservation objectives. Understanding such differences is crucial to developing more comprehensive and inclusive conservation approaches. Using plots, we assessed how numbers of useful species as reported by indigenous forest-dwelling people relate to plant species richness. We used 173 plots recording both trees and herbaceous vegetation and the knowledge of both Merap- and Punan-dominated communities in Malinau, Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). We used general linear models (GLMs) to characterise the relationships. Useful species increase with species richness in all cases. The relationship varied across culture and community and was not always linear. The proportion of tree species reported as useful by Merap (primarily agriculturalist) informants was not constant but declined significantly as plot diversity increased; this was not the case for Punan (primarily hunter-gatherer) informants. There was no decline for the reported proportion of useful herbs as richness increases, as assessed by either ethnic group. Communities with less wealth and less schooling generally reported a higher proportion of the useful species. We interpret these results in terms of how landscape patterns of plant diversity are experienced. Understanding of these relationships can help us develop a more explicit approach to weighing and reconciling different conservation values and management objectives in changing forest landscapes