Locally Based Wildlife Monitoring by Indigenous Communities of the Amazon

Vertebrate population dynamics in tropical ecosystems are increasingly understood to occur at large spatial and temporal scales and can be influenced by subsistence hunting, infrastructure development and resource extraction. Understanding and developing management responses to these dynamics and impacts require data collection at large spatial scales. “Citizen science” approaches are not feasible in these settings, but non-volunteer participatory methodologies may achieve the same purpose in remote but inhabited tropical regions when implemented in a rigorous and culturally appropriate manner.  We describe the design and management of participatory data collection during a three-year study of socio-economic factors affecting hunting behavior and wildlife population dynamics for 24 villages and 5 control areas distributed over a 47,600 km2 Amazonian indigenous landscape.  We also discuss the process of returning research findings to participating communities through community atlases.