Management implications of human livelihood strategies on Madagascar's coastal landscapes

Conservation Science and Practice · 2025-03-01 · 1 citations

Abstract The unsustainable harvest and consumption of wild animals destabilizes both wildlife populations and the human livelihoods that depend upon them. In coastal landscapes, the overexploitation of terrestrial resources can increase pressures on marine ecosystems, and vice versa. We explore populations' ability to mitigate hunting pressure by bolstering marine livelihood strategies, assessing whether Malagasy people (or aggregated households) (1) transfer harvest pressure and consumption from oceans to forests in times of lower fisheries yields and (2) habitually exploit both marine and terrestrial resources. We also evaluate the diversity of fishers' and hunters' methods used and species targeted, as reliance on a limited range of resources elevates sensitivity to perturbations in resource access and forces people to shift across rather than within livelihood strategies when experiencing scarcity. We present data on annual marine and terrestrial wildlife use in western Madagascar, where cyclic droughts and famines exert pressure on local populations, and people depend on wild food sources from adjacent mangrove and dry forests. In a study village outside Kirindy Mitea National Park, we surveyed and interviewed 369 individuals ( N = 89 households) and conducted 18 focus groups over 6 months (September 2018 to March 2019). We found that individual people tended to exclusively hunt or fish, and hunters pursued relatively few species with more specialized methods than fishers did. By distributing resource utilization across ecosystems, families likely increase household resilience. Therefore, conservation and alternative livelihood efforts will benefit from a regional‐scale, multi‐ecosystem approach.

The influence of cultural prohibitions on wildlife hunting and consumption in western Madagascar

Madagascar Conservation & Development · 2025-01-01

Unsustainable hunting is a leading driver of species decline globally, particularly in biodiversity hotspots like Madagascar, where wildlife conservation challenges intersect with severe humanitarian needs. In the Menabe Region near Kirindy Mitea National Park, wildlife hunting persists despite various prohibitions. While national legal frameworks, often developed with limited local input, seek to regulate hunting and consumption behaviors, regional studies have consistently shown that these laws alone are insufficient in safeguarding vulnerable species. In contrast, food prohibitions, such as species-specific taboos (or traditional fady in the case of Madagascar), are culturally derived prohibitions and ethical relations that shape how Malagasy individuals perceive and engage with wild and domestic animals. Previous research has highlighted the potential of fady to protect particular species while also acknowledging the complex nature of fady adherence in conservation contexts. This paper considers the impact of both locally rooted belief systems and national regulatory structures on wildlife use in a village near Kirindy Mitea National Park, where communities are navigating intersecting challenges of food insecurity and reliance on wild meat for sustenance. We carried out quantitative surveys of heads of households regarding their personal beliefs and adherence to taboos and laws, and expanded upon this information through focus groups and semi-structured interviews with key informants. While fady discouraged consumption in some species, it did not significantly impact hunting behavior. Similarly, stricter hunting laws are associated with reduced consumption but have little impact on hunting practices, primarilydue to poor law awareness. These findings underscore the limitations of top-down conservation policies and the need to support community-led conservation approaches that are informed by local priorities, challenges, and existing governance structures. Effective conservation policies must simultaneously recognize and address structural challenges, like food insecurity, that shape decision-making. These findings suggest the need for ongoing, community-engaged qualitative research into the material and sociocultural contexts that inform decision-making about wildlife use.La chasse non durable entraîne le déclin des populations de nombreuses espèces dans le monde, notamment à Madagascar, un hotspot de la biodiversité confronté à de graves défis écologiques et humanitaires. Bien que des lois imposées au niveau central visent à régulariser la chasse et les comportements des consommateurs, des études régionales ont montré que ces lois, à elles seules, ne suffisent pas à protéger les espèces vulnérables. En revanche, les interdictions alimentaires, telles que les tabous spécifiques à certaines espèces (fady de consommation dans le contexte malgache), sont des interdits d'origine culturelle qui influencent la perception et l'utilisation de la viande sauvage et domestique par les Malgaches. Des recherches antérieures ont mis en évidence le rôle potentiel des fady dans la protection de certaines espèces, tout en reconnaissant la complexité de leur respect dans un contexte de conservation. Cet article examine l’influence des interdictions culturelles et légales sur l’utilisation de la faune dans un village proche du parc national de Kirindy Mitea, dans la région de Menabe, à l’ouest de Madagascar. Ce village est caractérisé par un niveau élevé de chasse aux animauxsauvages, combiné à une insécurité alimentaire et une malnutrition significatives, mais l'effet des interdictions sur l'utilisation de la faune y a été peu étudié. Nous avons mené des enquêtes quantitatives auprès de chefs de ménage sur leurs croyances personnelles et leur adhésion aux fady, et complété ces informations par des groupes de discussion et des entretiens semi-structurés avec des informateurs clés. Bien que les fady influencent négativement la consommation, ils n'ont pas d'effet significatif sur la capture des animaux. De même, des lois plus strictes sur la chasse sont associées à une réduction de la consommation, bien que les résultats soient nuancés. Toutefois, les lois de conservation imposées d'en haut étaient peu connues dans la communauté et n'ont pas réduit la capture et la consommation de la faune sauvage. Nous recommandons des études qualitatives supplémentaires pour mieux comprendre les conditions dans lesquelles les individus consomment des espèces qu'ils considèrent comme immangeables ou culturellement interdites, afin d'expliquer leur prise de décision en matière d'utilisation de la faune.

Strontium Isotope Analysis and the Southern Mesopotamian City: Intraurban ⁸⁷ Sr/ ⁸⁶ Sr Variation and Diagenesis at Ur (Iraq)

Environmental Archaeology · 2025-03-28 · 1 citations

“But some were more equal than others:” Exploring inequality at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

PLoS ONE · 2024-09-06 · 5 citations

We explore the ways in which residents of Neolithic Çatalhöyük in Anatolia differentiated themselves as well as the ways in which they did not. We integrate numerous data sets in order to assess patterns of inequality (A) across buildings with contemporaneous occupations, (B) between buildings that did or did not burn at abandonment, and (C) through time. We use Gini coefficients so as to maximize comparability with other studies of inequality in the ancient and modern worlds, discussing the underlying data and our results to clarify and enhance the value of the quantitative analyses. We evaluate whether or not trajectories of inequality align across data sets in order to determine how far success in one realm correlated with success in another. Our results indicate no unified trajectory of inequality through time. We perceive broadly similar access to staple foods, but not to goods less directly related to survival; relatively elevated income inequality during the middle portion of the site's occupation, plausibly deliberately tamped down; and no evidence for institutionalized or lasting economic or social inequality. These findings shed light on Neolithic social dynamics and also contribute to broader discussions of inequality and the social ramifications of early agropastoralism.

Place, Encounter, and the Making of Communities

2024-01-01

This book sketches the first archaeological history of the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq and adjacent landscapes over a period of c. 12,000 years, from the earliest signs of human presence until the mid-first millennium BCE, based on data gathered between 2013 and 2023 by the Sirwan Regional Project (SRP). The central research objective of the SRP is to move beyond traditional historical _topoi_ and their predominantly external and state-centric perspectives that have dominated narratives of the region thus far. Instead, the chapters in this volume develop an in-depth, archaeological understanding of the nature of the region’s past communities, their cultural and economic practices, the modes of socio-political organisation they developed, adopted, and rejected, and their long-term developments. In order to reconstruct past Sirwan lifeways, the book interweaves regional-scale datasets with the results of ongoing and completed excavations at the Late Chalcolithic site of Shakhi Kora and the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age site of Kani Masi, as well as the results of a wide range of archaeological, Assyriological, art historical, and archaeometric analyses.

A Nuanced Examination of Primate Capture and Consumption and Human Socio-Economic Well-Being in Kirindy Mitea National Park, Madagascar

Animals · 2023-09-14 · 3 citations

The futures of human and nonhuman primates are closely tied in protected areas. Understanding this interconnectedness is especially urgent in Madagascar, one of the world's most impoverished biodiversity hotspots. Yet, no study has evaluated the relationship between poverty and lemur hunting and consumption using a composite poverty metric that includes health, education, and living standards. To address this gap, and to inform primate conservation practice and policy, we administered annual surveys to 81 households over six consecutive months (September 2018 to March 2019) in a village on the border of Kirindy Mitea National Park, Madagascar. We observed extreme deprivation scores across multiple dimensions of poverty and identified ninety-five percent of households as 'impoverished'. Of these, three-quarters (77%) of households were identified as being in 'severe poverty'. One-fifth (19%) of all households hunted lemurs and half (49%) of households consumed lemurs. While poverty eradication is an urgent need in communities around Kirindy Mitea National Park, our findings show no relationship between poverty and lemur hunting and consumption, perhaps due to the lack of variance in poverty. Our results highlight the need to investigate other contributory factors to lemur hunting and consumption locally. Because food insecurity is a known driver of lemur hunting and consumption among the study community, and because domestic meats can be preferred over protected species, we recommend testing the efficacy of livestock interventions near Kirindy Mitea National Park.

A Coupled Humanitarian and Biodiversity Crisis in Western Madagascar

International Journal of Primatology · 2023 · 10 citations

• Geography
• Socioeconomics
• Ecology

No gentry but grave-makers: inequality beyond property accumulation at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

World Archaeology · 2022 · 9 citations

• Sociology
• Sociology
• History

Archaeologists have adopted the Gini coefficient to evaluate unequal accumulations of material, supporting narratives modelled on modern inequality discourse. Proxies are defined for wealth and the household, to render 21st century-style economic tensions perceptible in the past. This ‘property paradigm’ treats material culture as a generic rather than substantive factor in unequal pasts. We question this framing while suggesting that the Gini coefficient can prompt a deeper exploration of value. Our study grows from multi-material evaluation of inequality at Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Here we use the Gini coefficient to scrutinise distributions of burial practices among houses. To the expectations of the property paradigm, the result is unintuitive – becoming slightly more equal despite rising social complexity. We explore possible explanations for this result, each pointing to a more substantive link between past futures and differentiated lives as a framework for archaeologies of inequality.

Her Cup for Sweet <b>Cacao</b>: Food in Ancient Maya Society edited by TraciArdren, Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2020. 400 pp.

American Anthropologist · 2022-01-24

Boron Isotope Analysis Reveals Borate Selectivity in Seaweeds

Environmental Science & Technology · 2021 · 7 citations

• Environmental chemistry
• Ecology
• Biology

The role of boron in terrestrial plant physiology is diverse and increasingly well understood, but its role in marine aquatic eukaryotes is less clear. Our research reveals a distinctive and large offset in boron isotopes from seawater, irrespective of seaweed type or season. We show that the offset is consistent with the incorporation of borate from seawater. Boron is a known micronutrient in plants but very few studies have used boron isotopes to investigate boron's role in plant physiology. Seaweed, as the most primitive multicellular plant, has an important role in investigating wider plant adaptations that use boron to meet functional needs. Furthermore, seaweed and other plants are a key base nutrient provider in food webs, supplying boron to consumers and playing a critical role in boron environmental cycling.