Long-Term Nature Reserve Human Interaction

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

Around the world, National Parks have often been characterized as "pristine nature" that has been untouched by humans. As a result, conservation programs have sought to minimize human impact on the landscape through land management programs and resettlement of people who called national parks home. One such national park is located in one of the most biodiverse regions on earth. In the belief that humans may be negatively impacting this biodiversity, the livelihoods of long-term residents have been significantly altered. They have been discouraged from carrying out farming, herding animals, gathering wood for fire or building houses and are also no longer allowed to hunt. The terraces on which they once lived are being actively reforested as part of a national conservation program. In addition, the location of their traditional settlements are being shifted from high altitude terraces to valley bottoms: a process that may expose the parks inhabitants to geomorphological hazards such as landslides. However, archaeological evidence suggests that the concern that people are negatively impacting the environment may be misplaced and shows that people have occupied this landscape for thousands of years. An interdisciplinary team conducts excavations and employs archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, geomorphological and isotopic evidence at a key site to answer how humans managed forests, planted crops, managed their animals and managed erosional processes over deep time. As the original community members of the valley are being resettled, traditional knowledge associated with how landscapes, plants and animals were managed is being eroded. These community resources are, however, critically important to local identity. Project personnel who are native to the region are being partnered with during fieldwork to co-produce results and to record terms and uses of key plants/animals and technologies in local languages; contributing to language preservation and sovereignty. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.