Ameaça ou ameaçada? A relação entre onças (Panthera onca e Puma concolor) e moradores das Reservas de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá e Amanã na Amazônia

Abstract

Can Neotropical big cats be both threatening and threatened? Disputes between the rural Amazon and conservationism can inhabit a common world? As an exercise of reflection on these and other issues, this thesis presents a characterization of the relationship between ribeirinhos (riverside residents) and big cats (jaguars and pumas) in Sustainable Development Reserves Mamirauá and Amanã, promotes a discussion about how legislation, managers, scientists and conservationists could mediate this relationship, and how the conflict interests between human actors involved could be treated symmetrically. To use the relationship between wild cats and ribeirinhos on SDR Mamirauá and Amanã as a case study, a characterization of this relationship was made from a local perspective, using questionnaires, meetings and informal conversations about this issue, with the aim of presenting the relationship with wild cats from the local people s perspective. Quantitative and qualitative analyzes of this relationship and the perception of ribeirinhos about this animals were presented, and revealed the damage caused by attacks on domestic livestock, damage caused by fear of an attack, and the number of wild cats slaughtered as a result. Environmental legislation and public policies were discussed, focused on Article 37 of the Environmental Crimes Law, which deals with exceptions to the ban on wild animal slaughter. Using the Actor-Network Theory as the method, a socio-technical network of the relationship between ribeirinhos and big cats in Mamirauá and Amanã was presented using images as a guide of the connections established between the actors. The socio-technical network was traced trying to follow some basic principles of the method, such as to adopt the policy as part of the scientific work, to abandon the modernist division between nature and culture and to assume the ontological multiplicity. Whereas the clash between traditional ways of dealing with problems arising from the interaction with jaguars and pumas, and the commitment to keep such animals protected is taking place in an arena where dialogue is difficult, in assuming the Actor-Network Theory as a method to analyze this relationship, It is expected to take a step to the composition of a common world that consider symmetrically humans and non-humans that make up the network. Therefore, the controversy between traditional knowledge and scientific about the relationship between ribeirinhos and jaguars were presented and discussed. The objective was to point out the controversies between the rural world and the conservationism, highlighting possibilities and limits of Actor-Network Theory in order to understand the construction of scientific knowledge, and for the policy on the relationship between big cats and traditional populations and their developments. Finally some remarks were made considering what could be done and what could not be done to mediate the conflict, not with the purpose of pointing definitive technical solutions, but establishing listening paths and symmetrical dialogue, dealing with the conflict with wildlife in a fair and democratic way