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6 Prospects for sustainable management

We suggest that, in San Rafael, management may be an inappropriate term for describing ribereno use of monte alto resources at present. In contrast, successional forests of purmas appear to support a higher degree of human manipulation. Purmas, however, are by no means stable islands of forest. They are part of a cycle of swidden agriculture. The agricultural phases of that cycle provide the principal source of income from the land of ribereños in San Rafael. Elsewhere, forest and fallow products may be as important (Padoch, 1987).

Table 10.5 Fruit species collected from monte alto in San Rafael, Iquitos , July 1989

When considering community use of forest resources in monte alto and purmas, people's attitudes toward the forest must be taken into account. Local people continue to believe that monte alto resources are inexhaustible, despite their awareness of the decline in availability of a few valuable forest products. Padoch (1987) has identified a similar pattern of behaviour in the Ucayali region.

The principal goal of the San Rafael communal reserve is to protect the forest from commercial timber extraction by companies from Iquitos. Secondarily, communal rules serve to regulate the extraction of high value species within the reserve by people from the community and neighbouring communities (Pinedo-Vasquez, 1988). Sustainable use of the resources of monte alto within the context of a communal reserve will require not only local knowledge, but also some technical input from outside the community. A forest management plan blending the two can promote not only the sustainable use of the forest resources but also the participation of local people in management decisions.

Table 10.6 Fruit Species collected from purmas in San Rafael, Iquitos, July 1989

Acknowledgements

We thank the community of San Rafael and the Federación Departamental de Campesinos y Nativos de Loreto. J. Chota-Inuma and M. Rios-Quiroz provided invaluable assistance in the field. Recent fieldwork has been supported by the Inter-American Foundation, the Tropical Forestry Program of the World Wildlife Fund/ Conservation Foundation, the Homeland Foundation, and the Tropical Resources Institute of Yale University.

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