On 28–29 October 2021, IUCN Netherlands convened the panel The Power of the Jaguar at the Royal Anthropological Institute's Anthropology and Conservation conference, bringing together anthropologists, biologists, filmmakers and conservationists from across the range of the jaguar Panthera onca to enhance understanding of the role this species plays in human consciousness and existence. In this unique collaboration, nine speakers shared their approaches for understanding and improving relationships between people and jaguars, based on field experiences with cattle ranching in the Brazilian Pantanal, illegal trafficking in Bolivia, human–jaguar conflict and ecotourism in Guyana and Suriname, cultural meanings and cosmologies of Indigenous groups in Amazonia, and approaches for systemic transformations benefiting jaguars and people in Venezuela and Mexico. The speakers illustrated the ways in which Indigenous and local communities are already engaged in jaguar protection, and emphasized the importance of strengthening such collaborations. They also examined how conservation strategies should do more to promote knowledge exchange between the social and natural sciences. The panel discussed two fundamental questions: what are the barriers to effective collaboration, and how have practitioners overcome these to make jaguar research and conservation an interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary pursuit?
The panel noted that jaguar conservationists must be open to alternative approaches beyond traditional conservation science, especially where local forms of environmental knowledge prevail, and that jaguars are threatened by habitat loss and retaliatory killing motivated by fear, material losses, economic motivations and religion. This panel is the beginning of a wider process of exchange and engagement among scholars and practitioners. Practitioners working to protect jaguars must learn from each other as well as from Indigenous and local peoples, whose imagination, stories, knowledge and experiences reflect important lessons this species has taught humanity. This paradigm shift will benefit the jaguar and the diverse peoples with whom it shares its habitat.
Recordings of the Panel's proceedings are available at youtube.com/watch?v=EFFGggFTOXY and youtube.com/watch?v=jUAeeknMKjU.
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