Accessing local knowledge to identify where species of conservation concern occur in a tropical forest landscape.

Conventional biodiversity surveys play an important role in ensuring good conservation friendly management in tropical forest regions but are demanding in terms of expertise, time, and budget. Can local people help? Here, we illustrate how local knowledge can support low cost conservation surveys. We worked in the Malinau watershed, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, an area currently at risk of extensive forest loss.

Developing a predictive understanding of landscape importance to the Punan-Pelancau of East Kalimantan, Borneo.

In order for local community views to be incorporated into new development initiatives, their perceptions need to be clearly understood and documented in a format that is readily accessible to planners and developers. The current study sought to develop a predictive understanding of how the Punan Pelancau community, living in a forested landscape in East Kalimantan, assigns importance to its surrounding landscapes and to present these perceptions in the form of maps. The approach entailed the iterative use of a combination of participatory community evaluation methods and more formal modeling and geographic information system techniques.

Recognizing local people's priorities for tropical forest biodiversity.

Tropical forest people often suffer from the same processes that threaten biodiversity. An improved knowledge of what is important to local people could improve decision making. This article examines the usefulness of explicitly asking what is important to local people.