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a v a i l a b l e a t w w w. s c i e n c e d i r e c t . c o m

w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e c o l e c o n

ANALYSIS

Socioeconomic predictors of forest use values in the Peruvian Amazon: A potential tool for biodiversity conservation
Michael C. Gavin a,*, Gregory J. Anderson b
a b

Environmental Studies, School of Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, 75 N. Eagleville Rd., Unit 3043, Storrs, CT 06269, USA

AR TIC LE I N FO
Article history: Received 7 September 2003 Received in revised form 11 January 2006 Accepted 17 January 2006 Available online 13 March 2006 Keywords: Forest use value Socioeconomic predictors Conservation Peru Ethnobotany Extractive resources

ABS TR ACT
Conservation is a crisis discipline requiring rapid action with limited funds. This study examines the potential of socioeconomic variables to predict forest use values. If natural resource use can be predicted from socioeconomic data, conservation planners could rapidly identify and focus conservation programs on the sectors of local populations that most intensively utilize local flora and fauna. Families in three communities in the northern Peruvian Amazon were surveyed over a 6-month period. Data were collected on use of flora and fauna from six locally determined use categories (food, medicine and poisons, wood, weavings, adornments, and other) in forest types of three age classes (fallow fieldsvery young forests, young secondary forests, and old secondary forests). Forest use values were the dependant variables calculated in $/ha/year. Socioeconomic variables included: age, education, family size, residence time, land worked, land owned, number of fishing nets, chickens, pigs, cows, and/or mules owned (all proxies for productive assets), and level of ecological knowledge (ability of informants to correctly identify forest species and answer basic questions about their biology). Ordinary least square multiple regressions were run independently for each forest type. Regressions were also run separately for the two most valuable use categories, food and wood. Low R2 adjusted values (all < 0.3) reflect the difficulty in predicting human behavior due to confounding variables and complex interactions. Residence time and a household's community of residence were the most significant predictors of forest use values. Households in Vista Alegre, the community with the highest density of people and smallest landholdings per household, extracted the highest value of forest products per hectare. The longer a family stayed in any community the higher the value of forest goods they extracted. If families that lived in an area longest are the most intensive extractors of forest products, they should be a major focus for conservation programming. In addition, the higher value of products extracted from forests by some families may make them more open to strategies seeking to protect long-term viability of the resources they utilize. The importance of residence time also indicates that planners need to account for changes in the resource use patterns of stakeholders over time. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +64 4 463 5195; fax: +64 4 463 5186. E-mail address: michael.gavin@vuw.ac.nz (M.C. Gavin). 0921-8009/$ - see front matter 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2006.01.010

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1.

Introduction

The vast majority of conservation programs and policies are intended to mitigate the impacts of human actions. The field of conservation is also often characterized by crisis, requiring rapid action with limited funds. Therefore, research is needed that increases the rate of response of conservation action. Onthe-ground conservation practitioners interact with myriad stakeholders, each having a different impact on the natural resources of an area. Conservation spending could be more efficient if practitioners had an effective method for rapidly identifying the stakeholders who have the greatest potential impact on key resources. In this study we propose a new method for identifying high impact stakeholders using an example of forest resource extraction activities in the Peruvian Amazon as the model system. Forest valuation studies have been used to quantify resource use in local households and place a value on forests based on the goods extracted (e.g., Godoy et al., 2000; Gram, 2001; Gavin, 2004). However, accurate techniques for the rapid assessment of forest use values are only in the initial stages of development (Gavin and Anderson, 2005). Alternatively, if certain socioeconomic variables collected via rapid rural appraisal methods can be used to directly predict the value of forest products extracted by local people, conservation organizations may be able to rapidly assess the impact of resource use patterns in local communities and focus efforts on sectors of the population that make the most intense use of natural resources. This study shows how multiple socioeconomic variables could be employed to serve conservation planning in this important role. What socioeconomic variables have the potential to predict forest use value? Both the use and management of forests can be extremely heterogeneous at even local levels (Anderson and Ioris, 1992; Gunatilake et al., 1993; Godoy et al., 1995; Coomes and Burt, 1997). Several reasons for the variance in local resource utilization in tropical forests have been examined. One of the most widely studied influences on local resource use may be the market integration of indigenous communities. While the impact of markets depends on numerous variables, such as consumption needs, market accessibility, and cultural preferences, three outcomes have been highlighted: intensification, specialization, and diversification of resource use (Godoy et al., 1995; Henrich, 1997; Sierra et al., 1999; Perez, 2001; Robinson et al., 2002). Distance to market influences the level of influence of the market, and obviously also the value obtained by local people from forest products. The farther a family lives from the market, generally the less value they receive from the collection of forest goods (Wickramasinghe et al., 1996). However, the role market access plays in determining resource use also may depend on other socioeconomic factors. For example, the abundance of highly valued forest products combined with the effects of a family's income and wealth (i.e., income plus assets) may alter the influence of market access. Wealthier families and/or those with higher levels of income may be more prone to taking greater risks regarding market oriented resource extraction, while the level of these risks is defined by the degree of local environmental heterogeneity (McSweeny, 2002). The limits of market access for explaining resource

use are also apparent when we consider the heterogeneity of use within or between communities with similar market accessibility (Coomes and Burt, 1997). A family's wealth may also play a key role in determining their patterns of resource exploitation. Some studies report a negative linear relationship between forest use and wealth, with wealthier families relying less on forest extraction (Godoy et al., 1995; Hedge et al., 1996). Others suggest a more complex scenario in which land-poor, asset-poor households and land-rich, asset-rich families both extract more forest products than either land-rich, asset-poor or land-poor, assetrich families (Takasaki et al., 2001). While the importance of wealth in shaping resource use patterns is undeniable, the differences in the influence of wealth among studies indicate the potential of other environmental or socioeconomic variables to confound the overall effect. Three other demographic variables that appear to affect the intensity of resource use by rural forest dwellers are family size, age, and level of education. The relationship between the number of family members living in a home and the value placed on forest products is probably mediated through labor access. More family members provide greater labor availability, which in turn allows for a diversity of resource use, including increased time allocation to relatively riskier resource use activities (Barnham et al., 1999; McSweeny, 2002). The collection of forest products often requires a large time output with uncertain benefits, making this activity more suitable for families with extra workers to spare. Families with older heads of household also tend to use more forest products (Lacuna-Richman, 2002). Older family members may be less likely to access alternative livelihoods, such as off-site labor, and are often more knowledgeable regarding extraction practices (Lacuna-Richman, 2002). Families with higher levels of education often use fewer forest products, as educated family members tend to seek off-site employment, which reduces their collection of forest goods accordingly (Hedge and Enters, 2000;). Acquisition of the ecological knowledge needed to find and collect forest products has been associated with increased resource extraction in rain forest communities (Barnham et al., 1999). The relationship between ecological knowledge and forest product use should not, however, be construed as one of direct causation. While a family or individual may possess knowledge concerning the biology and use of a plant or animal, this does not assume utility of the species. Gram (2001), for instance, found that many medicinal plants in the Peruvian Amazon were cited by local people as useful, but were not currently in use. The relationship between ecological knowledge and resource use is further confounded by the fact that the same variables that influence use also affect knowledge. Age, education, house size, and market access have all been found to influence the ecological knowledge of rain forest inhabitants (Boster, 1986; Godoy et al., 1998; Lacuna-Richman, 2002). The complex web of relationships that exists between the multiple socioeconomic variables discussed thus far demonstrates the need for a multiple regression analysis of the predictors of resource use. Although forest valuation provides some of the most robust data on forest resource use in the tropics, no study has used a multiple regression

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approach to examine the potential socioeconomic predictors of forest use values. This study presents the results from such an analysis.

2.3.

Data on forest use values (dependent variable)

2.
2.1.

Methods
Site location

We chose to focus our research on three communities, all of which are found within the buffer zone of the Cordillera Azul National Park in the Peruvian Amazon. The Cordillera Azul is the second largest national park in Peru with over 1.3 million ha, approximately the size of the state of Connecticut. The protected area is located within the Tropical Andes hotspot, designated as one of the 25 most biologically diverse regions on the planet (Myers et al., 2000). We selected communities closest to the boundary of the park that were comparable in terms of size and ecology. Because of time and resource constraints we were unable to study the entire population of each community. We sampled houses that were within 2-h walk of the community center, that were permanent residents of the community, and that agreed to participate in the study (three households in Nuevo Loreto, five in Santa Rosa, and two in Vista Alegre refused to take part). From this pool of potential candidates, sample households were selected at random (names of household heads pulled from a hat by a community leader). One-third of all households were surveyed (25 in Nuevo Loreto, 24 in Santa Rosa, and 18 in Vista Alegre) within each community. Santa Rosa is a Quechua Lamista indigenous community, while the residents of Vista Alegre and Nuevo Loreto are both Quechuas and Mestizos (people of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent). All three communities are located in lowland tropical moist forest between 200 and 500m, and community members rely on slash-and-burn agriculture, hunting, and gathering of river and forest products for subsistence.

2.2.

The model

We hypothesize that the total value of all forest products extracted by a given household reflects characteristics of a household's demographics (age of heads of household, levels of formal education, number of family members in the house, and residence time in the community), wealth, ecological knowledge, and attributes of the community in which the household is located. We express the forest use value, Y, of household i in community j as: Yij a bXij cZij dKij eVij Uij where, Yij=total value of forest products extracted from a given forest type, a=intercept, Xij=vector of demographic characteristics of household i in community j, Zij=wealth of household i in community j, Kij=ecological knowledge of household i in community j, Vij=community dummy to capture fixed effects of community j, Uij=unexplained value or random error term.a, b, c, d, and e are the coefficients we estimate with the regression model.

This study of socioeconomic predictors of forest use was part of a larger research program examining resource use in forests of different ages (Gavin, 2002, 2004). Forest stages were defined by age because of the relatively consistent land use histories in the region. Informant information was used to classify land into fallow fields (forests 15 years old), young secondary forest (520 years old), and old secondary forests (>20 years old). It was unclear whether areas outside the agricultural zones of each community were ever cleared for human use, opening up the possibility that these forests should be termed primary and not old secondary or old-growth. Because of the lack of more detailed land use history information and the limits of locally recognized forest classifications, all forests over 20 years were designated old secondary. To define the forest product use categories employed in the study, data were gathered from both male and female community members. During the first interview, informants were asked to produce free lists (Fleisher and Harrington, 1998; Bernard, 2002) of forest product use categories (e.g., medicine, food, etc.). In the second interview informants carried out pile sorts (Bernard, 2002; Roos, 1998) developed from the free list data. Pile sorts consisted of placing cards labeled with the names of all forest use categories into groups based on whatever criteria the informants selected. The groups produced from the pile sorts were then associated further via hierarchical clustering to produce the final use categories. Between 6 and 8 use categories were finally selected to avoid informant fatigue during the 6-month data collection process. The final use categories chosen were: food, medicine and poisons, wood (including both commercial and domestic wood products), weavings (including brooms, hammocks, baskets, hats, mats, and roofing), adornments (including leather, jewelry, and musical instruments), and other. We utilized this method of defining use categories as opposed to the a priori designation used in other studies (Prance et al., 1987; Phillips and Gentry, 1993), because our method avoids strong researcher bias and is based on culturally sensitive perceptions of forest use. Forest use was recorded over a 6-month period, and to control for seasonal variations in forest product availability, the test period covered both wet and dry seasons. To avoid informant fatigue and ensure that contributions were made by both illiterate and literate community members, a participatory method that integrated informants into the data collection process was developed based on the methods of Leesberg and Chavez (1994). Information gathered included the name of the species collected and the quantity (in locally relevant units; e.g., sacks of palm fruit), the forest type where the product was collected, whether a special trip was made to collect the forest product or whether it was encountered while in the forest on another errand, the time spent gathering the product, and whether the good was sold (along with its price) or used in the household. At least once a week, additional information regarding exact size and quantities of goods was elicited in semistructured interviews. Informants were asked to identify where each of the week's forest products was collected: on their land, on a neighbor's parcel, or on open-access land.

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Average weights of the quantities collected for each species were estimated from interviews or based on sample weighings. For each household, we followed a series of steps to calculate forest use values in $/ha/year. First, we give the overall procedure used to calculate this figure, and follow this paragraph with several others offering more detailed descriptions of the methods used for each element of this calculation. Our first step in the calculation was to determine the values in U.S. dollars of each forest product. These values were then multiplied by the quantity of the forest product collected in each extraction event. Costs associated with the forest product extraction event were then subtracted. The resulting figure was then divided by the collection area used. The values for each forest product collection event within a forest type were summed to produce a final use value for that forest type in $/ha. This figure was then multiplied by (365 / (# of days of data collection)) to obtain the final forest use values in $/ha/year. The value of goods was determined using one of three prices: community price, forest gate price, or estimated trade value. The community price is the amount of currency paid to purchase a set quantity of a good within the community. Forest gate price is the amount paid by traders who purchase goods in the community to sell in regional markets, and is also equal to the regional market price minus the costs incurred by a community member traveling to sell his or her own forest products. Finally, for those goods that are not normally bought or sold (e.g., medicinal plants), a method was modified from Godoy et al. (2000). A focal group made up of community leaders was first asked to free list items and provide prices for goods that were commonly purchased by community members (e.g., bread, matches, salt, etc.). Ten items were chosen from this freelist, such that a final list of goods was produced with incrementally increasing prices. Members of the focal group were then surveyed individually and asked where on the list of goods with known value, the forest product with no known price would fall. The results from the separate focal group participants were averaged to produce a final price approximation for forest products with no community price. Prices were first recorded in Peruvian Nuevo Soles and then converted to U.S. dollars using the May, 2002 exchange rate of 3.45 Nuevo Soles per dollar. Previous analysis of valuation methods has emphasized the importance of valuing forest products sold and goods consumed separately (Godoy et al., 1993). For this reason, those forest products that are sold to the market carried only the forest gate price, while those consumed in the household were valued using either the village price or the estimated trade value. To calculate the value of a good using any of the three pricing methods, the costs of obtaining the product must be subtracted from the final value Extraction costs were estimated from a combination of the data on time allocation collected in the logbook participatory method, and the average daily sums paid for wage labor in the communities. Extraction costs were only subtracted from final values if a special trip was made especially to collect the forest product in question. This avoided underestimating forest value for products collected opportunistically. The costs of extraction also included shotgun shells for hunting trips. The supply costs

of machetes, fish nets, and chainsaws were not subtracted from the final forest value due to their long-term use. In order to determine a final value in the form of $/ha/year, we divided the value of the forest product (after cost) by the collection area. Collection areas were determined separately by forest type for those products collected on the informant's own parcel, those from a neighbor's land, and those from open-access territory. Each participant's land holdings were estimated in semi-structured interviews, where heads of households were asked to list all forest holdings with accompanying ages. Forest ages were further checked against major events in the lives of the family (child births, deaths, illnesses, etc.). When informants had indicated that a forest product was collected from a neighbor's parcel, the average size of a land holding for the forest type in the community was used to calculate the final forest value. Open-access lands were defined as those areas not claimed by any member of the participating community or adjoining communities. In the community of Vista Alegre, open-access lands all fell outside the area of influence of local landholders, while in Nuevo Loreto and Santa Rosa, open-access lands could be found within the village boundaries interspersed with private lands, as well as beyond the village lands. In Vista Alegre the collection area for open-access lands was defined using data from forage follows, in which key informants were accompanied on their trips to the forest to collect products. These joint trips determined the average distance informants traveled during collection trips, a figure that was subsequently treated as the radius of a circular collection area. The average distance traveled was four km, and thus the collection area of 5024 ha was calculated using r2. This open access land was all old secondary forest. For Nuevo Loreto and Santa Rosa, the open-access collection areas were further divided into two zones. Zone one covered those open-access lands within the boundaries of each community, and included old secondary forest, young secondary forest, and fallow field forests (i.e., the 15 year old forests) not claimed by any current community members. The composition and extent of these lands were estimated by first calculating the percent coverage by each forest type in the land holdings of participating households. These percentages were then multiplied by the total area of zone one (5024 ha) to produce the final area of each forest type in the collection area of zone one. The Zone Two plots in Nuevo Loreto and Santa Rosa were outside the area of agricultural influence and were equal in size to the open-access collection area of Vista Alegre (5024 ha) and also treated as all old secondary forest. Use values were calculated separately for open-access land and private land holdings. The $/ha values calculated in this 6-month participatory study were multiplied by (365 / (# of days of data collection)) to determine the final use values in $/ha/year for each participating family in each forest type.

2.4. Data on socioeconomic variables (independent variables)

In initial house visits we collected a series of socioeconomic variables all of which have been shown by previous studies to influence either forest product use or ecological knowledge.

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Demographic variables included: average age of female and male heads of household, age of oldest member in house, average level of education attained by the male and female heads of household (highest grade attained in the Peruvian school system), family size (the number of people living in the house), and residence time (the average number of years the heads of household had been living in the community). Data collected on a family's wealth included: land worked (as measured by hectares of converted land ownedfields, fallow plots, and pasture), land owned (the total number of hectares in a family's private parcel), number of fishing nets, chickens, pigs, cows, and/or mules owned as a proxy for total assets. To measure the household's level of ecological knowledge, male and female heads of household were administered an 18 question survey. Six questions were developed for each of the three focal forest types: fallow fields, young and old secondary forests. Three of these questions focused on plant species and three on animals, with two-thirds of the questions asking informants to identify key species, and one-third focusing on the basic biology of these species. The focal species for the ecological knowledge test were determined based on free lists given by the five most well known hunters and/or healers in each community. These resource specialists were asked to list separately the most widely encountered plants and animals in each of the three forest types. The average position of a species on the lists of all informants was used to define its rank order by assuming that species listed toward the top of the list were more important than those listed farther down

the list. The five species of plants and five species of animals with the highest rank order in each of the forest types were used to develop the questions (see Appendix A for a list of questions used in this survey). The ecological knowledge survey was administered separately and simultaneously to the male and female heads of each household. In order to minimize the possibility of informants sharing questions with other families, all surveys were administered over a 2-day period in each community, families were asked not to share questions with other community members during that time frame, and the date and time of each survey was recorded. Analysis showed no significant correlation between the time a survey was administered and survey results. For plant identification questions, voucher specimens were presented to informants. For animal identifications, bird and mammal field guides were used (Hilty and Brown, 1986; Emmons and Feer, 1997). As in the Godoy et al. (1998) study, questions regarding the biology of a species were in a yes/no format (e.g., does species x have white fruit?) to avoid partially correct answers. Each informant received a score based on the number of correct answers; and the average ecological score of the male and female heads of each household was used in further analysis. Ordinary least square multiple regressions were run to test for the effects of the EXPLANATORY socioeconomic variables described above on the dependent variable of forest use value. In addition to the socioeconomic variables collected in the household surveys, a dummy variable for community was

1,200 1,100 1,000 900 800

Community N. Loreto V. Alegre S. Rosa

Forest Use Value ($/ha/yr)

700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Fallow Field

Old Secondary Forest

Forest Type

Young Secondary Forest

Fig. 1 Box plots of forest use values for different forest types from three communities in the Peruvian Amazon.

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added to control for community-fixed effects. Analyses were done independently for each forest type, substituting the appropriate data on forest value and ecological knowledge. Natural log transformations were used to correct for highly skewed distributions of the dependent variables. Before running the regressions, we tested for multi-collinearity between the explanatory variables. Multi-collinearity was found to be mild, with correlation coefficients between explanatory variables less than 0.25, and all independent variables were thus left in the regressions. A stepwise selection process was used to determine which explanatory variables were employed in each regression. Regressions were also run separately for the two most valuable use categories: food (measured as value of forests in $/ha/year as sources of food products) and wood (measured as value of forests in $/ha/ year as sources of wood products).

Table 1 Socioeconomic predictors of forest use values: results from linear regressions Independent Coefficient Standard Dependent R2 adjusted variables error variable ($/ha/year)
All use categories a Fallow field 0.197 value Residence Time Community 1 c Community 2 (Constant) Eco. knowledge Community 1 Community 2 (Constant) Residence time (Constant) 0.03 0.323 0.924 1.44 3.33 0.09 0.687 1.25 0.043 2.29 0.018* b 0.496 0.363** 0.469 1.75* 0.407 0.382* 1.15 0.009*** 0.150

Young secondary forest value

0.051

3.
3.1.

Results
Forest use values

Old secondary forest value d Food category e Food value in fallow field Food value in young secondary forest f Food value in old secondary forest

0.293

0.283

The value of fallow fields across the 67 families surveyed ranged between 5.70 and 305.70$/ha/year (Fig. 1) with a median value of 8.20$/ha/year. For young secondary forests, the range was 3.85 to 1034.80$/ha/year with a median of 28.60 $/ha/year. The value of old secondary forests was between 0.00 and 1183.00$/ha/year with a median of 6.80$/ ha/year. Wood (median values of 0.00, 3.30, and 3.50 $/ha/year respectively in fallow fields, young secondary, and old secondary forests) and food (1.19, 2.40, and 1.02$/ha/year) were the most valuable use categories. All other use categories had median values below 0.20 $/ha/year in every forest type. Open-access lands had median values of 0.00$/ha/year with only a very limited number of families extracting any notable value from these lands; and thus these lands were not considered in subsequent analysis. It is, however, very important to take note of the fact that open-access lands were worth the most in terms of total value (52% of the total value of all lands as measured in $/year; Gavin, 2002). However, because these lands covered such a large area, their value on a per hectare basis was minimal.

0.032

Residence time Age (Constant) Residence time (Constant)

0.036 0.03 2.02 0.022 1.60

0.012** 0.014** 0.490 0.013* 0.220

0.136

Residence time Land worked (Constant)

0.031 0.019 0.415

0.012** 0.010* 0.227

Wood use category g Wood value 0.174 in fallow field h

3.2.

Forest use value predictors

Wood value in young secondary forest Wood value in old secondary forest i

0.127

Family size Age Eco. knowledge Community Community (Constant) Community Community (Constant)

0.063 0.015 1.93 1 2 1 2 0.460 0.281 3.56 0.434 1.205 2.48 0.02 2.31

0.031** 0.008* 0.764** 0.178** 0.168* 0.561 0.367 0.374** 0.241 0.006** 0.092

0.164

Residence time (Constant)

Overall, the low R2 adjusted values illustrate the limited success regression models had in predicting forest use values (see Table 1). This result is not atypical of studies of human resource use (e.g., Godoy et al., 1998; Coomes et al., 2000), and reflects the difficulty inherent in predicting human behavior due to the multitude of potentially confounding socioeconomic variables and the complexity of interactions among these variables. The variables with the most potential for predicting forest use values across all use categories were residence time, community, and ecological knowledge (Tables 1 and 2). The longer that a family had resided in their community, the higher the value they extracted from both fallow fields and old secondary forests. The average residence times of heads of households surveyed ranged from 0.1 to 44 years. For every 10

a For three models with all use categories, dependent variables were transformed using ln(x + 6). b *Significant at the 0.10 level, **significant at the 0.05 level, ***significant at the <0.001 level. c Community 1 = 1 for Santa Rosa and 0 for Vista Alegre and Nuevo Loreto, Community 2 = 1 for Vista Alegre and 0 for Santa Rosa and Nuevo Loreto. d Model excludes four families, see text for details. e For three models with food use category, dependent variables were transformed using ln(x + 2). f Excludes one family. g For three models with wood use category, dependent variables were transformed using ln(x + 8). h Excludes four families, see text for details. i Excludes eight families, see text for details.

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Table 2 Summary statistics for socioeconomic variables used as potential predictors of forest use values in three Amazonian communities Variable Median
Family size Age Oldest family member Education level a Residence time a Land worked (ha) Forest owned (ha) b Chickens Pigs Mules Fishnets Ecological knowledgea, c 6 34 39 4.5 11 13.4 14.6 15 1 0 0 64

Vista Alegre Max

14 51 74 8.5 25 33.0 56.8 70 10 12 1 78

Santa Rosa Min

2 19 20 1.5 4 4.3 3.0 2 0 0 0 39

Nuevo Loreto Min

2 22 27 0.0 3 2.5 0.0 2 0 0 0 58

Median
6 38 43 4.0 22 14.5 29.5 15 1 0 2 75

Max
11 66 76 7.5 44 37.0 62.0 50 10 1 3 94

Median
5 34 38 4.25 2 4.5 60.3 18 0 0 1 65

Max
9 60 62 11 27 84.5 151 55 30 2 4 84

Min
2 23 25 1.5 0.1 1.3 0.0 5 0 0 0 50

a For these variables an average was calculated based on values for male and female heads of household. b Includes all land that falls into the three forest type categories: fallow field, young secondary forest, and old secondary forest, but does not include active fields and pasture land. c Based on ecological knowledge survey (see Appendix A), and reported as percentage of correct answers given.

years a family lives in a community, the value they extract from fallow fields annually would be predicted to increase by 2.10$/ha, and the value collected annually from old secondary to increase by 3.08 $/ha. These increases are impressive considering the median values for fallow fields and old secondary forests are 8.20$/ha/year and 6.80$/ha/year. A portion of the variance in forest value in both fallow fields and young secondary forests may be explained by variables associated with community. For instance, families in Vista Alegre extract a significantly higher value of forest products from both fallow fields and young secondary forest than members of the other two communities (Table 2). That is, the communities are different. Ecological knowledge has some predictive power in the young secondary forest category, where more knowledgeable informants extracted a higher value of forest goods. The ecological knowledge for participating families ranged from only 39% of correct answers to 94%. For each increase of 10% in the number of correct answers on the ecological knowledge survey, families were found to collect 2.77$/ha/year more in forest goods from young secondary forest. Finally, in the analysis of predictors of old secondary forest value, it should be noted that four of the 67 families did not fit into the final regression presented in Table 1. These four families were those that extracted the greatest value from old secondary forests and were outliers excluded from the final model. The high values for these families can not be explained by the residence time of these families, but perhaps by other characteristics not explicitly measured in this study. For example, one of the families was that of the principal healer in Santa Rosa, and another spent nearly four of the study's 6 months at a secondary residence much deeper in the forest. While this family's second home was still within the boundaries of the community of Santa Rosa, it was much farther from the community center. This location undoubtedly meant that forest resources near the family's second home were under less pressure and therefore the family could extract more items of higher value. The two remaining families were the

only households in Vista Alegre to own chainsaws, obviously a key factor that would allow for higher rates of extraction of valuable timber species. Owning a chainsaw allows a family to exploit the forest in new ways, providing quick and easy access to valuable timber species. In addition, chainsaws can make it easier to clear forest for agriculture, providing more of an incentive to alter patterns of forest cover and current forest extraction options. Finally, chainsaws can be rented to neighbors, providing additional income to the family and enabling more community members to alter their forest use activities. As communities transition from clearance with hatchets to use of chainsaws, we would expect drastic changes in forest use. Therefore, while patterns do emerge in our models that account for some of the variance in forest use values, important idiosyncrasies exist among some families. When the focus shifts to the value of forest types as sources of food, the importance of residence time as a predictor of use values is still evident (Table 1). In both fallow fields and old secondary forests, an increase of a decade in residence time is predicted to boost the value of collected forest food products by $0.84/ha/year. While this increase would seem small, it is over 70% of the median value of food products for either of these two forest types. In young secondary forests, the opposite effect was noted, with an increase in residence time predicted to lead to a decrease in the value of forest food products. However, this regression model shows the weakest goodness-of-fit, with an R2 adjusted value of only 0.032. In fallow fields, informant age also affects value from forest food products, with younger persons gathering more value in food from these forests than older participants. Finally, in older secondary forests, wealth, in the form of land worked by a family, also influences the collection of forest food products. For every 10 more hectares of field or fallow owned by a family, the regression model predicts 0.58$/ha/year more of forest food products will be collected (coefficient for land worked = 0.019 following ln(x + 2) transformation). The land area worked by families in these communities ranges from just 1.3 to 84.5 ha, which would allow for changes in the value

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Table 3 Results from MannWhitney U comparison of forest use values and ecological knowledge between families born in the Amazon and those from other biomes Independent variable
Fallow field value ($/ha/year) Young secondary forest value ($/ha/year) Old secondary forest value ($/ha/year)

Mean rank of Amazon-born families

36.33 36.83 36.34

Mean rank of non-Amazon-born families

27.15 25.68 27.12

Z-score
1.69 2.04 1.69

p-value
0.093 0.041 0.092

of forest food products collected from old secondary forests of up to 4.00$/ha/year. In the wood use category a broader mix of socioeconomic variables is needed to predict forest use values (Table 1). For both fallow fields and old secondary forests, the large discrepancy between a small set of families that extracted large values of wood and the majority of families that collect much less wood throughout the year, made the construction of a universal regression model impossible. For both of these forest types the few families (five for fallow fields and eight for old secondary forests) that collected more than $50.00/ha/year in wood were removed from the regression analysis. Explanations of the patterns of resource use by these families may require the use of other socioeconomic variables not measured here, such as ownership or ready access to chainsaws. In fallow fields, the value of wood products for the remaining 62 families can be predicted using a combination of family size, average age of heads of household, ecological knowledge, and community membership. Larger families, younger heads of households, less ecologically knowledgeable families, and members of Vista Alegre and Santa Rosa extract more woodbased value from fallow fields. As was seen in the other use categories, increased residence time predicts a significant increase in forest use value in old secondary forest. The only pattern evident in the extraction of wood from young secondary forests, the most valuable use category from the most valuable forest type, is that families in Vista Alegre collect the highest value.

head of household are removed from regression analyses, the effect of residence time does not change. Residence time, regardless of birthplace, is still a significant predictor of fallow field and old secondary forest use values, food use values, and old secondary forest wood use values.

4.

Discussion

3.3.

Residence time

The predictive power of residence time warrants a closer look at this variable. Immigrants to the Cordillera Azul come from nearby areas in the Peruvian Amazon, as well as from more distant Andean and coastal regions. Community members from these three distinct biomes might be expected to utilize the forests of the Cordillera Azul to different extents. The 17 families in which at least one head of household was born outside the Amazon region, in either the Andes or on the coast, reported significantly shorter residence times than the remaining 50 families with at least one Amazonian-born member (MannWhitney U, Z-score = 4.05, p < 0.001). Therefore, it might be expected that the forest use values for a family reflect the ecology of the birthplaces of the heads of household, and not just the length of time they have resided in the particular community where they were surveyed. A significant difference does exist in the use values of all forest types between nonAmazonian and Amazonian-born families (Table 3). However, when the 17 families with at least one non-Amazonian

Multiple socioeconomic variables have been analyzed in the literature for influence on resource use in rural tropical communities. The few studies that have taken a more rigorous multiple regression approach have pointed to the importance of either market integration and access, or wealth indicators as potential predictors of local knowledge and use of natural resources (Godoy et al., 1998; Barnham et al., 1999). Important in the context of our work here is that some have suggested that socioeconomic variables, such as wealth, may be valuable tools for conservation. That is, such variables might be used as a means to rapidly provide information about which sectors of the population can be expected to most intensively harvest or manage local resources (Takasaki et al., 2000). Detailed studies of forest use can take more time than available to make decisions in conservation triage situations. The results from our study in the Cordillera Azul point to the predictive potential of rapidly accessible socioeconomic variables at both community and household levels. Community-level factors, including differences in local ecology, market access, immigration rates, and patterns of community landholdings, can influence what resources households access and utilize. We suspect that for the communities we surveyed, the ecology, immigration rates, and market access did not have as great an influence as patterns of landholdings within a community. Ecologically, the three communities chosen were located in comparable biographic regions. We also saw no clear link between the speed with which a community was growing via immigration and the use of forest resources. Vista Alegre, with a moderate level of immigration compared to Nuevo Loreto (high levels of immigration) and Santa Rosa (very low levels), produced higher forest use values. The ethnic composition of a community may also have influenced the community-level impact on forest use values. Our results indicate that families with heads of household native to the Amazon basin had higher forest use values (Table 3). Therefore, we might predict that communities with more indigenous families would produce higher forest use values. However, the inhabitants of Vista Alegre, where the higher forest use values were recorded, are of mixed cultural origins compared with those from Nuevo Loreto (mostly non-indigenous

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immigrants) and Santa Rosa (mostly indigenous lowland Quechua). Vista Alegre did have greater market access than the other two communities. The inhabitants of Vista Alegre could walk (carrying goods on their backs or via mules) to market in under an hour, while those in Santa Rosa needed to pay for a boat ride, and community members in Nuevo Loreto had to negotiate an arduous day long trek to get to market. However, those surveyed in the community of Vista Alegre sold a smaller proportion of their forest goods in regional markets (12% of goods in Nuevo Loreto, 9% in Santa Rosa, and only 8% in Vista Alegre; Gavin, 2002). In addition, the average goods sold were not of a significantly greater value in Vista Alegre (average goods sold to market in Nuevo Loreto were worth $55.00, $20.76 in Santa Rosa, and $55.82 in Vista Alegre). Instead, we can attribute the significance of community-level factors in our regression models to differences in the way land was allocated during community development. Vista Alegre was a much more densely populated community, with households possessing median forest holdings smaller than those in the other two communities (Table 2). The smaller land holdings meant that forest products needed to be extracted from a smaller area, giving Vista Alegre higher forest use values per hectare. This outcome points to the need to consider the density of community settlement when analyzing potential forest use patterns. In addition, our results indicate that a different variable, residence time, can be used as a predictor of forest use values. The correlations produced by the regression analyses performed in this study imply that the longer a family resides in a community, regardless of where they immigrated from, the more value they will extract from different forest types. While residence time is also often correlated with ecological knowledge (Gavin, 2002), a greater knowledge of forest resources may not be a determining factor in forest use. The absence of ecological knowledge as a significant predictor of forest use in the majority of use categories and forest types leaves us without a mechanism by which longer residence time could increase extraction value. Why then would longterm residents of a community extract more value from forests than recent arrivals? Perhaps forest extraction requires not only an intimate knowledge of local species, but also of local ecology. Where are these species found? How does their distribution relate to known edaphic and topographic features of the landscape? With what tree species are the desired animals associated? The ecological knowledge survey results utilized in this study do not reflect this level of biological understanding, and for that reason may not have been correlated with resource use patterns. The ecological survey also does not address the ethnobiological knowledge of a family. The use of forest products requires not only an ability to identify, and locate a species, but also knowledge of its extraction and preparation. Fine-tuning of the knowledge instrument may provide the data necessary to explain the correlation between residence time and forest use values. The demonstrated importance of residence time may influence environmental conservation. If, in fact, the families that have lived in an area the longest are the most intensive extractors of forest products, then they should be priorities for conservation programming. Because these families extract the

most value from local forests, they may also represent the greatest threat to overharvested species. However, the higher value that some families extract from forests may make them more open to strategies that seek to protect long-term viability of the resources they utilize. It should not be overlooked, however, that less extraction does not necessarily mean lower impact. In fact, families that are not extracting large values of forest products may be making up for this discrepancy in income and consumption through farming. This point emphasizes the need for more research on the sustainability of both farming and extraction activities in the Cordillera Azul and elsewhere in the tropics, as well as on the relative importance of extraction and farming for non-indigenous livelihoods. Finally, the correlation between residence time and forest use values informs conservation planners on the dynamics of resource use. Integrated conservation and development planners must realize that key stakeholders are in essence moving targets. The livelihood strategies of today may not be those of tomorrow. Further research into the role of residence time on ecological knowledge and resource use can thus play a potentially important part in conservation planning in the tropics. Residence time, while being the most significant socioeconomic factor tested, does not alone explain a very large percentage of the variance in forest use values. Several other variables including community of residence, age, family size, and ecological knowledge were found to be important predictors in at least one use category or forest type. No one variable or set of variables was able to predict more than 30% of the variance in forest use values. These results demonstrate the importance of a multiple regression approach, but also point out the need for developing increasingly complex models. Our results provide the first steps towards creating multiple regression models containing key socioeconomic variables, which can rapidly and accurately predict forest use values. The use of socioeconomic predictors has enormous potential in conservation planning. If natural resource use can be predicted from socioeconomic data, conservation practitioners could rapidly identify and target sectors of local populations which have the greatest impact on resources. Such rapid planning and well-targeted action would greatly increase the efficiency with which conservation is accomplished.

Acknowledgements
Financial support for this study was provided by the Conservation, Food, and Health Foundation, Switzer Foundation, U.S. Fulbright Programs, Garden Club of America, Conservation and Research Foundation, Ronald Bamford Endowment of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the Graduate School and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Connecticut. We wish to thank Lily Rodriquez and the staff of the Centro de Conservacin, Investigacin, y Manejo de Recursos Naturales, Carlos Rengifo and Rafael Linares of the Centro de Desarrollo e Investigacin de la Selva Alta, Carlos

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Linares and Guillermo Vasquez of the Instituto de Investigaciones de la Amazonia Peruana, and Carlos Reynel of Unversidad Nacional Agraria La Molina for crucial logistical support and advice. Gracias to Miguel Vasquez, Melita Ozambela, and Luis Garcia for their invaluable assistance in the field, and to the people of Nuevo Loreto, Santa Rosa, and Vista Alegre for welcoming us so warmly. Z. Cardon, R. Chazdon, J. Silander, J. Solomon, R. Wallace, and an anonymous reviewer all provided useful comments and suggestions for the preparation of this manuscript.

Is the resin of the topa (Ochroma pyramidale; Bombaceae) yellow (Yes or No)?

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Appendix A. Ecological knowledge survey questions

Animal Identification Old secondary forest: Collared Peccary (Tayassu tajacu)Plate 18, No. 6 (Emmons and Feer, 1997) Kinkajou (Potos flavus)Plate 15, No. 3 (Emmons and Feer, 1997) Young secondary forest: Great Tinamou (Tinamus major)Plate 1, No. 3 (Hilty and Brown, 1986) Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus) Plate 4, No. 3 (Emmons and Feer, 1997) Fallow fields: Black Agouti (Dasyprocta fuliginosa)Plate 29, No. 10 (Emmons and Feer, 1997) Variable Chachalaca (Ortalis motmot)Plate 6, No. 9 (Hilty and Brown, 1986) Animal Biology Old secondary forest: Do the White-lipped Peccary (Tayassu pecari) travel in groups (Yes or No)? Young secondary forest: Is the egg of the Perdiz (Tinamou; Penelope spp.) white (Yes or No)? Fallow fields: Does the common opossum (Didelphis marsupialis) climb trees (Yes or No)? Plant Identification Old secondary forest: Espintana, Malmea sp. (Annonaceae) Moena, Nectandra sp. (Lauraceae) Young secondary forest: Bolaina, Guazuma crinita (Sterculiaceae) Atadijo, Trema micrantha (Ulmaceae) Fallow fields: Ocuera Negra, Pollalesta discolor (Asteraceae) Topa, Ochroma pyramidale (Bombacaceae) Plant Biology Old secondary forest: Can cedro (Cedrela odorata; Meliaceae) have aletas (buttresses) (Yes or No)? Young secondary forest: Is the fruit of the yumanasi (Muntingia calabura; Elaeocarpaceae) red (Yes or No)? Fallow fields:

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