TY - JOUR
T1 - Are isolated indigenous populations headed toward extinction?
AU - Walker, Robert S.
AU - Kesler, Dylan C.
AU - Hill, Kim
N1 - Funding Information:
Financial support was provided by grants from the National Geographic Society (#9165-12 and #9764-15) and University of Missouri Research Council and Research Board. The authors appreciate the investment of The Institute for Bird Populations for this published contribution number 516. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank Marcus Hamilton, Antonio Rodrigues, Morgan Helderle, and Bryce Schmidt for their help with this project.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Walker et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2016/3
Y1 - 2016/3
N2 - At least 50 indigenous groups spread across lowland South America remain isolated and have only intermittent and mostly hostile interactions with the outside world. Except in emergency situations, the current policy of governments in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru towards isolated tribes is a "leave them alone" strategy, in which isolated groups are left uncontacted. However, these no-contact policies are based on the assumption that isolated populations are healthy and capable of persisting in the face of mounting external threats, and that they can maintain population viability in the long-term. Here, we test this assumption by tracking the sizes and movements of cleared horticultural areas made by 8 isolated groups over the last 10-14 years. We used deforestation data derived from remote sensing Landsat satellite sensors to identify clearings, and those were then validated and assessed with high-resolution imagery. We found only a single example of a relatively large and growing population (c. 50 cleared ha and 400 people), whereas all of the other 7 groups exhibited much smaller villages and gardens with no sizable growth through time. These results indicated that the smaller groups are critically endangered, and it prompts an urgent re-thinking of policies toward isolated populations, including plans for well-organized contacts that may help save lives and rescue isolated indigenous populations from imminent extinction.
AB - At least 50 indigenous groups spread across lowland South America remain isolated and have only intermittent and mostly hostile interactions with the outside world. Except in emergency situations, the current policy of governments in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru towards isolated tribes is a "leave them alone" strategy, in which isolated groups are left uncontacted. However, these no-contact policies are based on the assumption that isolated populations are healthy and capable of persisting in the face of mounting external threats, and that they can maintain population viability in the long-term. Here, we test this assumption by tracking the sizes and movements of cleared horticultural areas made by 8 isolated groups over the last 10-14 years. We used deforestation data derived from remote sensing Landsat satellite sensors to identify clearings, and those were then validated and assessed with high-resolution imagery. We found only a single example of a relatively large and growing population (c. 50 cleared ha and 400 people), whereas all of the other 7 groups exhibited much smaller villages and gardens with no sizable growth through time. These results indicated that the smaller groups are critically endangered, and it prompts an urgent re-thinking of policies toward isolated populations, including plans for well-organized contacts that may help save lives and rescue isolated indigenous populations from imminent extinction.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0150987
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0150987
M3 - Article
C2 - 26954672
AN - SCOPUS:84960944941
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 3
M1 - e0150987
ER -