Table Of ContentDiagnosing Wild
Species Harvest
Resource Use and Conservation
Matti Salo
Department of Biology, University of Turku,
Turku, Finland
Anders Sirén
Department of Geography and Geology,
University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Department of Geosciences and Geography,
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Risto Kalliola
Department of Geography and Geology,
University of Turku, Turku, Finland
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Author Biographies
Matti Salo is a biologist and a PhD in Environmental Science. His fields of
interest include governance, management and policy issues related to natural
resources, biodiversity and conservation—with a particular emphasis in forest
policies. Salo is a long-term Amazonia enthusiast and a member of the Univer-
sity of Turku Amazon Research team (UTU-ART). He has spent time in the
region annually since the late 1990s, with a particular commitment to P eruvian
Amazonia, but also working and traveling extensively in parts of Bolivia, B razil,
Colombia and Ecuador. In addition to academic work, Salo has published
books and other writings about Amazonia and biodiversity issues directed to
the general public.
Anders Sirén is a biologist and PhD in Rural Development Studies. He was a
postdoc researcher at the University of Turku from 2009 to 2013, and is cur-
rently a lecturer in geography at the University of Helsinki. Sirén has spent over
10 years in Ecuadorian Amazonia, where he has conducted extensive field work
for social and natural science research related to wild species harvest and land
use change in indigenous communities, and also made shorter visits to Peruvian
Amazonia. He loves fishing in the swift rivers of western Amazonia and dreams
about saving Amazonian fisheries from the multiple threats of overfishing, habi-
tat destruction and pollution.
Risto Kalliola is a professor of geography at the University of Turku. He has
made a long career on biogeographical, ecological and resource management
studies in Amazonia and northern Europe. He is interested in the role of sci-
entific understanding in the use of renewable natural resources and in land
use planning. Kalliola is one of the founder members of the multi-disciplinary
University of Turku Amazon Research team (UTU-ART), which has over three-
decades long research history in Amazonia.
xi
Preface
Wild species are important resources supporting the livelihoods of millions of
people around the globe. At the same time, the harvest of wild plants and ani-
mals is a major driver of worldwide ecosystem change. In some contexts, some
people may consider such harvest to be something undesirable that should be
stopped. Others may consider it to be something worth supporting for its socio-
economic importance as well as for its supposed environmental benignity. For
sure, wild species harvest is something that deserves being taken seriously. And
that is why we have written this book.
Although many books deal with the harvest of wild species, most of them
have focused on some limited set of resources or a particular type of harvest,
such as fisheries, wildlife, timber, or the ill-defined concept of nontimber forest
products (NTFPs). In this book, however, we wanted to take a comprehensive
approach covering the harvest of all kinds of wild species, including plants as
well as animals, and terrestrial as well as aquatic organisms. We believe that this
is a useful approach because the challenges involved in maximising the benefits
and minimising the harm from wild species harvest are often similar, although
the harvested species themselves may be very different from each other.
Our intention with this book is to provide to the reader a complete reading
experience carefully built to be explored from the beginning to the end – and back,
if felt necessary. After an introductory part, covering the general importance of
wild species harvest, and the meaning of some basic concepts, comes the second
part, where each chapter presents a context-specific case of wild species harvest.
These chapters are not independent scientific case studies but instead illustrating
nonfiction stories that present a series of views on the world as it is, incomplete
and sometimes even contradictory, but with countless pieces of information and
nuances of realities from which lessons can be learned. These stories, we hope,
will make readers acquainted with the realities of the lives of people who, in one
way or another, make their living by wild species harvest, and will prepare readers
for absorbing the theory presented in the third part.
We hope the theory will help the reader to scrutinise the cases from a set of
complementing thematic perspectives and at the same time be, universal and
applicable to any other case of wild species harvest one might encounter. Finally,
in the fourth part of the book, we tie the theoretical perspectives together in a way
that should help the reader to apply the message of the book to any case of wild
species he or she may encounter, in the form of the Diagnosing Wild Species
Harvest (DWiSH) Procedure. We believe that, when picking up this book and
starting to read it, many readers may already have a case of wild species harvest
in mind, being concerned about its impacts or hopeful about its potentials. We
xiii
xiv Preface
would like readers to see those cases of their own in parallel with the ones we
present, and also reflect the case to all the theory and discussion found on the
pages of the four parts of this book.
The main geographical focus of our examples is on Amazonia in South
America. Resource overuse by overintensive extraction continues to be far too
common in this area, yet we are convinced that there must also be solutions to
this problem. Like elsewhere in the tropics, or almost anywhere on Earth, the
harvested populations of many wild species of plants and animals easily become
depleted because of their excessive or otherwise inappropriate harvest. Whether
to prioritise biodiversity conservation or the production of goods for consumption
is often a matter of intense debate locally, but these considerations can also have
global significance. The complexity of this setting is particularly familiar to us in
the Amazonian lowlands, where all three of us have conducted research during
the last few decades. There, we have witnessed concrete situations of resource
use and overuse, and a large part of our research has aimed at understanding the
underlying factors affecting wild species harvest. Amazonia is, in fact, one of the
parts of the world where the harvest of wild species seems to be almost omnipres-
ent and indispensable for many people’s livelihoods. An advantage of focusing on
a clearly defined geographical area such as Amazonia is that we can be fairly sure
that we have somehow covered most types of species resources whose harvest is
significant there, in economic or ecological terms.
As our ambition is that the theory presented should be universally applicable,
however, we also present outlooks to other parts of the world, in particular to the
Nordic countries. We were all born in Finland, and as students, as professionals,
and also as part of everyday life, we have become acquainted with many forms
of wild species harvest practised here in the boreal landscapes, including berry
and mushroom picking, fishing, hunting, logging, and reindeer herding. As the
natural as well as the societal settings are so different in Amazonia and the Nor-
dic countries, we believe that it can often be enlightening to compare the two,
highlighting not only the differences but also the similarities.
We hope that scholars, students, and practitioners from a variety of disciplines
or otherwise with different backgrounds will find value in the cases, in the theory, in
the DWiSH Procedure and – more g enerally – in the ideas we lay out. We argue that
understanding the complexity of wild species harvest from many different perspec-
tives, instead of just a few limited viewing angles, helps to combat the vicious spiral
of overharvest followed by ecological problems and socio-economic collapse. Con-
crete actions and decisions are needed by many different actors, from local stake-
holder groups to big companies, policy makers, consumers, and nongovernmental
organisations. Addressing such a multifaceted and diverse phenomenon as wild spe-
cies harvest in one volume inevitably leads to a trade-off between breadth and depth
of treatment. For those readers who wish to get deeper into some particular field of
theory, an extensive list of bibliographic references is provided.
In Turku 25th of June 2013,
The Authors
Acknowledgements
We have received valuable inspiration, feedback, and inputs from a number of
collaborators. Wild species harvesters in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia,
Finland, and Sweden have shared their experiences and thoughts with us over
the years; we are grateful for their friendly attitudes to our keen interest to
learn what is harvested, how, and why. Our colleagues in the Amazon Research Team
of the University of Turku as well as many other scholars at several u niversities
and research institutions in Peru, Ecuador and many other countries have
helped us to formulate our thoughts better. We also acknowledge three dif-
ferent groups of students at the University of Turku and one at the Pontificia
Universidad Católica del Ecuador as they have evaluated and tested many of
the approaches presented in this book, thus providing useful feedback.
Dr. Jukka Salo commented on an early version of this entire book in a way
that is highly acknowledged, and he also wrote two thematic boxes into it. Sev-
eral colleagues read and commented on draft versions of the whole manuscripts
or parts of it. We are grateful to: José Álvarez, Juan-Camilo Cárdenas, Pedro
Flores, Juha Hiedanpää, Miia Itänen, Mark Johnson, Sanna-Kaisa Juvonen,
Juha Kotilainen, Martti Pärssinen, Kalle Parvinen, Aili Pyhälä, Henna Rouhi-
ainen, Kalle Ruokolainen, Francesco Sabatini, Andrea Siqueira, Andrés Tapia,
Hanna Tuomisto, David Wilkie, and the students of the aforementioned courses.
Many people also helped us during the recent fieldwork that was carried out,
particularly in order to document some of the stories from the forest floor. We
would like to thank in particular Natalia Aravena, Hugo Cabieses, Luciano Cár-
camo, Alonso Córdova, Alfredo García, Ulla Helimo, Martín Huaypuna, Gareth
Hughes, Sixto Luna, Petra Mikkolainen, Carlos Reyes, Juan Fernando Reyes,
Róger Rumrrill, José Torres Vásquez, Nathan Vogt, and all the people mentioned
in the stories from the forest floor. Some of the stories root on our fieldwork
carried out over prolonged periods of time in the communities of Asocación
Boberas, Teresa Mama, Chubakucha, Ishpingu, and, in particular, Sarayaku, and
our deepest gratitude goes to all the numerous people of these communities who
have supported, facilitated, and actively participated in these research activities.
The same is true for many people in Iquitos, in particular at the Instituto de
Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana (IIAP). We thank all the people who
provided photographs for the book, and also Maiju Kähärä, who finished several
of our figures and additionally drew the symbols that describe the seven the-
matic perspectives in Part 3. Finally, we would like to thank the Kone Founda-
tion for funding the work necessary to carry out the project that led to this book
(in the specially allocated grant call ‘The Significance of Biodiversity, 2010)
and the University of Turku for a stimulating working environment’.
xv
Acronyms
ACTO Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization
AFIMAD Asociación Forestal Indígena Madre de Dios
AMETRA Aplicación de Medicina Tradicional
CBD United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity
CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research
CITES International Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora
COINACAPA Cooperativa Integral Agro-extractivista de Campesinos de Pando
CPUE Catch Per Unit of Effort
DPSIR Drivers–Pressures–State–Impacts–Responses (framework)
DWiSH Diagnosing Wild Species Harvest
EBA Empresa Boliviana de Almendra y Derivados
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization
FSC Forest Stewardship Council
GIS Geographic Information System
GPS Global Positioning System
IIAP Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonía Peruana
IIRSA Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America
ILO International Labour Organization
INPA Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia
ITQ Individual Transferable Quota
ITTO International Tropical Timber Organization
IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature
MCDM Multi-Criteria Decision-Making
MSY Maximum Sustained Yield
NGO Non-governmental Organization
NTFP Non-Timber Forest Product
OTCA Organização do Tratado de Cooperação Amazônica / Organización del Tratado
de Cooperación Amazónica
POC Particulate Organic Matter
REDD Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
RIL Reduced Impact Logging
SINCHI Instituto Amazónico de Investigaciones Científicas
SLAR Side-Looking Airborne Radar
TAC Total Allowable Catch
TURF Territorial Use Right
UNAP Universidad Nacional de la Amazonia Peruana
WCED World Commission on Environment and Development
xvii
xviii Acronyms
WHO World Health Organization
WWF Worldwide Fund for Nature
ZEE Zonificación Ecológica Económica
Part I
Focus on Wild Species
Harvest
In many places on Earth, renewable natural resources are often perceived
to be poorly managed and their harvest deficiently coordinated, planned,
regulated, and governed. This easily leads to overharvest and detrimental
extraction, harming the targeted species’ populations and causing collat-
eral damage in the ecological systems of which they form a part. What are
then left behind are exhausted resources and impoverished environments.
Ecosystem deterioration and problematic wild species harvest are com-
mon in many parts of the world, but the adverse effects of human interven-
tions with nature are often particularly visible in tropical areas. This is not
necessarily because of a more careless type of harvest in general, but rather
because the effects of harvest are seen in ecosystems that are extremely
diverse and at the same time still in better conditions than is common in
many temperate regions. The challenges are not only ecological, however.
Wild species harvest frequently also involves problems of social character,
and people, in many tropical areas, appear to be trapped in vicious spi-
rals of resource depletion and poverty – while seemingly living amidst a
bounty of b iodiversity-related economic opportunities. Fortunately, how-
ever, this is not the whole picture and there are also glimpses of hope that
can be found by examining harvest situations in different contexts.
Although each case is unique, wild species harvest situations across the
globe share many common characteristics. Thus, there is need for integra-
tive approaches and further unification of concepts in order to focus on
this phenomenon and give it a thorough diagnostic treatment.
Preview to the Chapters of Part 1
These chapters together provide the baseline understanding for the rest of
the volume. Having the focus set to the diagnosis of the state of wild spe-
cies harvest, it is important to introduce the overall context. First of all, by
1
2 PART | I Focus on Wild Species Harvest
the word ‘diagnosis’ we refer to the task of identifying the status of wild
species harvest as an activity, including both the state of the resources and
the harvest systems in question. Furthermore it refers to the identification
of the possible problems and their causes, as well as potential solutions in
any particular harvest situation, anywhere on Earth.
But what do we mean by wild species harvest? And why is it important?
Where does it occur? And how do we interpret and apply the key concepts
and terms around this topic? By first making these issues clear, we hope-
fully not only inform the reader but also motivate you to further dive into
the details of wild species harvest in Amazonia, in the tropics, and on
Earth. This way, the reader will also be facilitated to explore the stories
from the forest floor in Part 2, to digest the theoretical exposition in Part 3,
and finally to be able to make use of the Diagnosing Wild Species Harvest
Procedure (DWiSH Procedure), in Part 4 of the book.
Chapter 1 scrutinises the history and significance of wild species har-
vest as a worldwide phenomenon. Our human evolutionary history as
hunters and gatherers implies that our ancestors lived from the harvest
of wild plants and animals. A great number of valuable products have
their origins in nature, and countless people rely on their harvest and use,
including processing, transport, and trade. This implies that although the
concrete action of wild species harvest is invisible to many consumers, it is
still not only a part of history or restricted to those parts of the world con-
sidered ‘poor’ or ‘underdeveloped’ by many. Rather, wild species harvest
and the products obtained therefrom are important or even essential to all
contemporary lifestyles.
Chapter 2 provides the conceptual background to support the reading
of this book and defines our interpretation of some important terms and
concepts used, such as wild, species, harvest, and harvester, as well as
biodiversity, ecosystem functions, ecosystem services, and sustainability.
We also briefly explain how the harvester is in the juxtaposition of nature
and society, something important that will be returned to in later parts of
the book.
