Stardate 20030918.1257

(On Screen): Another snappy conference in Durban, South Africa, is coming to a close. This time it's the World Parks Congress, which meets every ten years. It's sponsored by the World Conservation Union.

As always, the conference ended with a joint declaration. For instance, they're worried about certain marine ecosystems. (Rightfully so; a lot of the world's great coral reefs are in deep trouble, for a variety of reasons.)

They also came out strongly in support of "indigenous people" who live inside of protected areas. Not to put too fine a point on it, those attending the conference saw such indigenous groups as being just like all the other animals in the park.

Indigenous peoples, their lands, waters and other resources have made a substantial contribution to the conservation of global ecosystems. For this trend to continue, where appropriate, protected areas, future and present, should take into account the principle of collaborative management attending to the interests and needs of indigenous peoples.

I think I spotted the presence of "noble savages". As we all know, it is only modern industrialized humans who ravage the world. Indigenous people live in harmony with nature. (They're also peaceful, loving, kind and virtuous, and they never engage in war or violence. They are wise and healthy and happy and untroubled, and don't feel alienated the way environmentalists feel who live in the industrialized world.)

Naturally enough, any meeting sponsored by a group called the "World Conservation Union" is going to be very concerned about endangered species. So when I read this, what I found myself wondering was this: what if said indigenous people end up hunting endangered species or causing significant damage to the environment? How does this lot deal with the contradiction?

Such indigenous peoples do those kinds of thing, and sometimes very effectively. The males of certain bird species have extremely colorful and elaborate plumage, and indigenous peoples often hunt those birds to get the feathers. The pelts of certain animals are highly prized in many places. For instance, during the height of the Zulu nation in the 19th century, the Zulu equivalent of what we'd call "dress uniforms" included a headband made of leopard skin, and several large ostrich feathers. And since Shaka established mandatory military service, every male Zulu had these things, numbering tens of thousands of men, and thus at least thousands of dead leopards and ostriches.

Closer to home, Native Americans in Oregon and California and British Columbia traditionally carved large canoes out of whole cedar logs and used them to hunt whales (!) during their annual migration up and down the coast. The Inuit also hunted whales, and both groups want to begin doing so again.

They no longer live as their ancestors did, needless to say, and perhaps conservationists could dismiss these particular cases for that reason. But even among those who live now as their ancestors did thousands of years ago, in the middle of big parks, many hunt some kinds of game animals because they're easy to catch, some because they're tasty, and some because the fur or feathers or skin are prized. Some kinds of prey are hunted precisely because they're dangerous, to prove manhood. (That's part of why the Zulus wore leopard skin.)

Some animals are hunted because it is thought that parts of their bodies have medicinal value. Some medicines used by primitive tribes actually are effective, but most aren't. (We have learned of many useful drugs from primitive tribes, but those who've studied such things have found that the majority of what they believe about treatment of disease is nonsense.) Some things are hunted for use in shamanistic spells or ceremonies.

In their hunting practices, such primitive tribes don't necessarily concern themselves with whether a given species is endangered. If such a species is rare where they are, they won't find many to kill. But if they're locally plentiful, they'll hunt them even if it turns out that it's one of the last remaining significant populations in the world.

Indigenous people in many areas have traditional lifestyles which are far from being what a lot of romantics in the industrialized world would consider "in harmony with nature". For instance, in the Amazon (and a lot of other places), some of them practice what's called "slash and burn agriculture". They farm, after a fashion. But the soil in the Amazon basin isn't very good, and the way they farm isn't sustainable. They move to an area, clear the jungle usually by burning it and letting the ashes serve as fertilizer (and as an alkali to neutralize acid in the soil), and then farm it for a year or two until the soil gives out. Then they move on and do it again somewhere else, leaving behind large cleared areas with damaged soil for the jungle to reclaim and rebuild. It takes decades at least for that to happen, so tribes living this way need really huge areas overall, moving from place to place every couple of years, since they can't come back to any area to use again unt