Dear All,

I also attended to the NAOC 2004 and in agreement with Rob, but being
sincere, it did not surprised me the lack of ethno-ornithological
studies, it seems the people-bird component "for the majority" of
ornithologists is still at the level of "background" at the best,
when for many presenters "local people" do not even exist. To
illustrate this point, in a very mathematical presentation of habitat
fragmentation, someone ask at the end of the talk if there were some
people living around or owning the land, and the speaker
responded "no, I never saw people around". The closest social-
included approaches are those in the shape of public education, if I
am wrong, please correct me. I did the effort to make some
contribution by talking about indigenous knowledge on habitat
management and territory conservation in my talk, which was
programmed at the end of the program sessions, particularly at the
Conservation Policy session on Saturday afternoon. At this moment,
few people remained in the event, and even less were present in the
rooms. Why? You may have the answer. Scientific-westernized
ornithology is dominated by very sophisticated ecological studies on
single species, determination of new areas rich on birds
that "deserve protection", and plenty of studies on habitat
fragmentation and impacts on birds. It was clear for me, there is a
high quality of studies and very good presenters at Veracruz, Mexico
and I have not doubt they are advancing ecological knowledge to
conserve birds and their habitats. The question that remains for me
is when are these investigations going to be linked with local land
use practices and communities interests and knowledge systems (both
on birds and their habitats)? When are we going to recognize that
people-bird interactions are not always negative? and that there are
ways to conserve birds in human-dominated ecosystems that do not
necessarily imply the acquisition and protection-restriction of land
from locals.

I will be glad to hear some reactions from you,

Cheers,

Leonardo Cabrera-Garcia, Ph.D.
Department of Geography
McGill University, Montreal, Canada.