Relationship between family productive diversification, management and conservation status of Euterpe edulis in Misiones, Argentina.

GARCÍA, DAILY; REIS, M.S; HILGERT, N.I.

Belém do Pará

Congreso; XVI Congresso da Sociedade Internacional de Etnobiologia; 2018

International Society of Ethnobiologu¿y

Conservation requires a planned interaction between protected and managed sectors. In order to integrate the human being and his way of life, the tools and theoretical bases of ecology and ethnoecology are fundamental. Human influence on palm populations (Arecaeae) has been studied extensively. The relationship goes from tolerance to intentional cultivation and has led to the domestication of some species. The ?palmito? (Euterpe edulis), is distributed from the NE of Brazil to the NE of Misiones in Argentina. In Misiones it forms high density patches called "palmitales", located in interdigitated conservation environments with productive landscapes. There observed extensive and diversified management. In those spaces the palmitales are exploited with greater or lesser frequency and intensity. In the past the buds were sold as food and nowaday the fruits for the production of seedlings for ornamental purposes. This same variability and dynamics is observable in the rest of the productions and in the importance of palmito in the family economy. In this study, the structure of wild populations of palmitales with different intensity and management history is compared and the role of the palmitales in family productive units with different productive management is analysed. Measurements of the demographics structure of palmitales, semi-structured interviews and mapping of the productive configuration of the family units were made. A relation was found between the intensity of management of the palmitales, the productive diversification of the family systems and the rural residence. When migrating from the countryside the tendency is to simplify the productive units, the palmitales lose importance and the management of the forest remnants does not favor their conservation. The results show the importance of studying the use of wild resources in a broad context in which the socio-environmental factors that indirectly model such uses and populations are taken into account.