Interviews with local people on species abundance in the Amazon.
Credit: Pedro Perez. Consent has been granted for use of the photo.

By Franciany Braga-Pereira, Pedro Mayor, Thais Q. Morcatty, Pedro E. Pérez-Peña, Mark T. Bowler, Marina A. R. de Mattos Vieira, Rômulo Romeu da Nóbrega Alves, Julia E Fa, Carlos A. Peres, , Aline S. Tavares, Carla Mere-Roncal, Carlos González-Crespo, Carolina Bertsch, Claudia Ramos Rodriguez, Claudio Bardales-Alvites, Eduardo von Muhlen, Fernanda Pozzan Paim, Jhancy Segura Tamayo, João Valsecchi, Jonas Gonçalves, Leon Torres-Oyarce, Lísley Pereira Lemos,  Michael P. Gilmore, Miguel Antúnez Correa, Natalia Carolina Angulo Perez, Pablo Puertas, and Hani R. El Bizri.

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Given the ongoing environmental degradation from local to global scales, it is fundamental to develop more efficient means of gathering data on species and ecosystems. Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK) in which local communities can provide information on animals over time has been shown to be accurate. Several studies demonstrate the accuracy of data obtained from interviews by comparing them to data obtained from conventional methods (such as line transects and camera traps). Here we reduced the exclusive reliance on comparisons between different methods by directly analyzing the accuracy of interview data on LEK by employing a consensus analysis. Consensus analysis should be used to validate LEK-generated data, instead of comparing these types of data with information obtained by conventional methods.

We interviewed 323 hunters through the whole Western and Central Amazon to estimate the abundance of 101 species using a four-point scale. We found a good accuracy of information (consensus level>0.6) in all villages and for 79.6% of interviewees, having the villages with smaller population size even higher accuracy level. Although the accuracy of the data was high for 85.3% (n=81) of all species, it was higher when estimating the abundance of species that are more frequently hunted or are more apparent. We show in our study in the Amazon that information gathered by local peoples, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, can be useful in understanding the status of animal species found within their environment.