Abstract
This chapter employs a quantitative ethnobotanical analysis to explore the kinds of plants the people use for their daily life and compares the local plant and land use patterns of a rural village and an urbanized village. This chapter then addresses how local people depend on biodiversity and how traditional human modifications of the forest contribute to the conservation of biodiversity. As a result, the proportion of useful trees was high in the barrier island’s primary forest (68.4 %) and the main island’s reserve (68.3 %) and low in the main island’s secondary forest (29.3 %). Some species were found only in human-modified forests (e.g., reserve and secondary forests). Additionally, the reserve and mangrove forests, which existed exclusively in the rural village area, provided the rural people with a number of useful resources, while the urban people lacked access to these resources. These findings illustrate how a local society’s use of resources was related to community welfare as well as to environmental preservation.
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Notes
- 1.
For detailed observations of plant use, 15 and 17 household s were randomly selected from the 65 and 202 households in Olive and Dunde , respectively. Written informed consent for participation in the survey was obtained from each head-of-household (head). The participants were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time and that they had a right to refuse to answer any questions. All interviews were conducted in the local Roviana language by the author with the help of local assistants (Mr. Edwin Huti and Mr. Rex Daga). No economic incentives were provided to the participant households to avoid bias; however, following completion of the research, a suitable cultural gift (food ) was given to each household.
- 2.
The food surveys were conducted in August in both villages to avoid seasonal differences between the two villages.
- 3.
Although the villagers planted a number of varieties of these root crop s, all varieties were grouped at the species level.
- 4.
When the patient consulted other villagers or herbalists outside of the village, the herbalist was interviewed about the recipe. If the herbalist refused to disclose his/her recipe, that treatment was excluded from the analysis.
- 5.
People commonly use a type of buni called buni masa (literally meaning “buni at the coast”; Calophyllum inophyllum); however, the buni used for building houses includes various Calophyllum species grown in forest.
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Furusawa, T. (2016). Plant Resources as Ecosystems Services. In: Living with Biodiversity in an Island Ecosystem. Ethnobiology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-904-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-904-2_5
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