CHAPTER 4 



WILDLIFE DENSITIES IN SUCCESSIONAL FORESTS 



AROUND A MAYA VILLAGE IN QUINT ANA ROO, MEXICO 



Introduction 



Anthropologists, ecologists, and wildlife biologists have commented widely on the impact of 

 shifting cultivation on wildlife populations in the Neotropics and the habitats in which the wildlife 

 occurs (cf., Redford and Robinson, 1987; Robinson and Redford, 1991a; Vickers, 1988). While some 

 researchers have considered shifting cultivation as being destructive of natural habitats and the wildlife 

 populations that depend on undisturbed conditions, other researchers have noted that many wildlife 

 species do in fact occur in large numbers in areas used by humans for horticultural purposes and may 

 obtain some benefits from these areas. Rather than documenting the widespread depletion of game and 

 natural vegetation, recent studies on the use of tropical rainforests by native Amazonians and 

 prehistoric indigenous people in Panama, for example, have suggested that the swiddens and fallows of 

 these people may be more complex than expected, and that the dichotomy between natural and managed 

 forests may not be as well-defined as previously thought (Dufour, 1990; Irvine, 1987; Linares, 1976). 

 Given the antiquity of these horticultural systems and the long-term uses of the associated flora and 

 fauna by these people, including subsistence hunting, under certain conditions shifting cultivation and 

 wildlife populations may be compatible. 



Hunting is an integral component of the subsistence pattern of native Amazonians (Balee and 

 Gely, 1989). Subsistence hunting, however, is not an independent activity. Rather, it has been 

 proposed that the game taken by hunting is in part supported by shifting cultivation. Two field studies 

 and one theoretical paper have examined the impact of shifting cultivation on wildlife abundance and 

 subsistence hunting by indigenous peoples. One of the first studies to suggest a relationship between 

 wildlife abundance and shifting cultivation was that of Linares (1976). Based on an archaeological 



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