The Sacha wagra and the spirits<\/h2>\n
In the early 1990s, the Inga community of San Miguel de La Castellana was embroiled in the Colombian civil war, caught in the crossfire between paramilitary groups and FARC guerrillas. Seeking answers, the elders turned to ayahuasca (or ambiwaska as it\u2019s known in the Inga language), a brew made from the yag\u00e9 vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and the leaves of the chacruna (Psychotria viridis). Traditionally, it\u2019s used by many cultures in the region to treat illnesses, divine the future, and find solutions to problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandfather, had a vision that we had to leave and where to go,\u201d Muchavisoy says. \u201cWe crossed the mountains for 12 days. When we found the place, we called it Musuiuiai, which means \u2018new thought\u2019 in our language. Over time, more people came, and the village grew.\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019d arrived in a part of the Amazon-Andean piedmont, a bioregion where the Amazon Rainforest blends into the foothills of the Andes, creating a biodiversity hotspot. It\u2019s also a rich crossroads of Indigenous Andean and Amazonian cultures. Here, 54 Inga people founded Musuiuiai as a sanctuary for Inga traditions during a time of social upheaval.<\/p>\n
The 18,000 hectares (44,000 acres) of lowland rainforests and cloud forests surrounding the settlement are home to an array of animal species, including the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus) and jaguar (Panthera onca). In the Inga traditional worldview, these forests are inhabited by powerful spirits whose wishes are communicated to the elders during ayahuasca rituals and must be respected. While many Inga people today have converted to Christianity or mix it with their traditional beliefs, the Musuiuiai community still mainly practice their ancestors\u2019 animist traditions.<\/p>\n
Josefina Quinchoa, the last elder at Musuiuiai who says she can commune with the spirits, guides the community in the spiritual use of plants and animals. One of the strictest taboos is hunting the tapir, known as the Sacha wagra. The animal was once hunted by community members before their move to Musuiuiai for its meat and fat used in ointments for pregnancy and childbirth. Even then, it was still considered sacred for its habit of visiting spiritually significant sites.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tapir is the guardian of the mountains and the saladeros [salt licks], where we find the deer, armadillo and paca we hunt,\u201d Muchavisoy says. Today, if \u201csomeone hunts at a saladero without an elder\u2019s permission or kills a tapir, it offends the spirits, and they can drive the animals away or make a hunter sick or kill him.\u201d<\/p>\n The community\u2019s change of mind on hunting the tapir shows that shamanist traditions aren\u2019t necessarily static and can have shifting views of the world\u2019s nature, says Carolina Amaya, subdirector of Colombia\u2019s Center of Intercultural Medicinal Studies (CEMI) and project manager of the institute\u2019s Amazonian programs.<\/p>\n Other Indigenous communities continue to hunt tapirs for subsistence and cultural reasons. There\u2019s debate about whether this level of hunting necessarily impacts the animals\u2019 population. According to Mosquera-Guerra at the National University of Colombia, even subsistence hunting can be unsustainable. But researchers at CEMI, longtime collaborators with the Musuiuiai community, say most Indigenous hunting of tapirs can be sustainable. Unsustainable hunting, they say, is a result of Westernized hunting styles and acculturation.<\/p>\n In Musuiuiai, it was the revered status of the tapir that gave the village fertile ground to receive a new official status.<\/p>\n In 2019, with the help of CEMI, Musuiuiai began documenting its biodiversity. \u201cTraditionally, we monitored our wildlife and our forests using ambiwaska and the visions it gives us, but with [CEMI\u2019s] help we started using camera traps and GPS units,\u201d Muchavisoy says.<\/p>\n A year later, Musuiuiai was recognized as a \u201cterritory of life,\u201d or ICCA (Indigenous and Community Conserved Area). Defined as locally governed areas of outstanding biological and cultural diversity, ICCA designation can improve community land rights and local governance while benefiting the conservation of biodiversity and cultural heritage, according to human rights and environmental activists.<\/p>\n \u201cThese conservation efforts aim to deter potential invaders of their territory, including state or private development projects such as mining exploration, exploitation, roads, new settlers, or migrants,\u201d says CEMI\u2019s Amaya. \u201cIt gives them a layer of protection for their territory and culture, through international recognition.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the first actions of the new ICCA was to strengthen Jos\u00e9 Muchavisoy\u2019s community environmental defense group, known as the Alapamata Michadur, or \u201cdefenders of the territory,\u201d and shift focus toward the conservation of their sacred animal. Beginning with monitoring, the project has since evolved into an Inga-driven effort to gather baseline data on the factors influencing tapir behavior and population within the territory, helped by the Conservation Leadership Programme, a U.K.-based conservation funding organization.<\/p>\n Combining traditional tracking skills with newly acquired citizen-science methods, the defenders of the territory hike for hours to set up camera traps, retrieve images, and collect scat samples that are then analyzed by CEMI.<\/p>\n \u201cI collect the seeds from the fruits the tapir eats for study, so we can understand how these animals affect the health of the forests of our territory,\u201d Maribel Jim\u00e9nez tells Mongabay. \u201cFieldwork can be hard; sometimes we have to cross rivers, and there are always rainstorms. But we love doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n The project is a positive example of biocultural conservation, an approach based on the alignment of conservation goals with the value systems of Indigenous cultures, says Tania Gonz\u00e1lez Rivadeneira, a researcher with the Ecuadorian Society of Ethnobiology not directly involved in the project.<\/p>\n \u201cTraditionally, communities have sometimes been seen as adversaries by conservationists and excluded or even removed from their land, but many Indigenous peoples have coexisted with nature for thousands of years in ways that support biodiversity,\u201d Rivadeneira tells Mongabay. \u201cWe refer to the tapir biologically, but it also has different names and meanings in different cultures. For the Inga of this community, these meanings are driving conservation effort. It shows the effectiveness of biocultural conservation.\u201d<\/p>\n There are no findings yet to share from the project.<\/p>\n Yet the efforts in Musuiuiai are also part of a wider strategy, aimed at benefiting not only the conservation of the species and the broader biodiversity of their own territory, but also that of other Indigenous communities in the region.<\/p>\n Out of recent conservation efforts and the inauguration of the ICCA has emerged a more ambitious proposal for biocultural conservation, designed and spearheaded by the guardians of the territory: a biocultural corridor. The proposed corridor aims to safeguard more than 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of forest, stretching from the municipality of Villa Garz\u00f3n, where the settlement is located, to the neighboring municipality of Orito.<\/p>\n The idea is that the corridor will protect not only the populations and movements of wildlife such as tapirs, but also the cultural traditions and spirituality of the Inga and other neighboring Indigenous peoples such as the Awa, Nasa and Embera.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to help them become ICCAs too and join our biocultural corridor, so we\u2019ve been talking and sharing our ideas with them,\u201d Muchavisoy says. If other ICCAs are designated by the ICCA Consortium as autonomous tribal territories, they\u2019ll form part of a corridor linked to Musuiuiai \u2014 an outcome they hope to achieve in the next few years through careful negotiations.<\/p>\n However, an important sticking point has emerged in these discussions, driven by the Inga\u2019s efforts with their sacred animal.<\/p>\n \u201cOther communities still hunt the tapir, so we want to try to persuade them to stop,\u201d Muchavisoy says, adding, \u201cI think we\u2019ll be able to convince them.\u201d<\/p>\n Guo, Y., Ren, G., Zhang, K., Li, Z., Miao, Y., & Guo, H. (2021). Leaf senescence: progression, regulation, and application. Molecular Horticulture, 1, 1-25. doi:10.1186\/s43897-021-00006-9<\/p>\n Mosquera-Guerra, F., Moreno-Ni\u00f1o, N., Barreto, S., & Armenteras-Pascual, D. (2024). Habitat suitability and representation of the potential distribution of the lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) within land cover types and protected areas of eastern Colombia. Mammal Research, 1-12. doi:10.1007\/s13364-024-00750-5<\/p>\n Passos Cordeiro, J. L., Fragoso, J. M. V., Crawshaw, D., & Oliveira, L. F. B. (2016). Lowland tapir distribution and habitat loss in South America. PeerJ, 4, e2456. doi:10.7717\/peerj.2456<\/p>\n G\u00f3mez Rinc\u00f3n, C. M. (2020). The spiritual dimension of yage shamanism in Colombia. Religions, 11(7), 375. doi:10.3390\/rel11070375<\/p>\n Clerici, N., Salazar, C., Pardo-D\u00edaz, C., Jiggins, C. D., Richardson, J. E., & Linares, M. (2018). Peace in Colombia is a critical moment for Neotropical connectivity and conservation: Save the northern Andes\u2013Amazon biodiversity bridge. Conservation Letters, 12, 1, e12594. doi:10.1111\/conl.12594<\/p>\n Sze, J. S., Childs, D. Z., Carrasco, L. R., Fern\u00e1ndez\u2010Llamazares, \u00c1., Garnett, S. T., & Edwards, D. P. (2024). Indigenous Peoples\u2019 Lands are critical for safeguarding vertebrate diversity across the tropics. Global Change Biology, 30(1), e16981. doi:10.1111\/gcb.16981<\/p>\n Reyes-Garc\u00eda, V., C\u00e1mara-Leret, R., Halpern, B. S., O\u2019Hara, C., Renard, D., Zafra-Calvo, N., & D\u00edaz, S. (2023). Biocultural vulnerability exposes threats of culturally important species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(2), e2217303120. doi:10.1073\/pnas.2217303120<\/p>\n Montenegro, O. L., L\u00f3pez-Ar\u00e9valo, H. F., Mora-Beltr\u00e1n, C., Lizcano, D. J., Serrano, H., Mesa, E., & Bonilla-S\u00e1nchez, A. (2019). Tropical ungulates of Colombia. Ecology and Conservation of Tropical Ungulates in Latin America, 157-195. doi:10.1007\/978-3-030-28868-6_9<\/p>\n O\u2019Farrill, G., Galetti, M., & Campos-Arceiz, A. (2013). Frugivory and seed dispersal by tapirs: An insight on their ecological role. Integrative Zoology, 8(1), 4-17. doi:10.1111\/j.1749-4877.2012.00316.x<\/p>\nGuardians in a territory of life<\/h2>\n
An ambitious biocultural corridor<\/h2>\n
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