Descending from mountains: birds and winds in traditional weather forecasting in southern Andean temperate forests, Chile
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Date
2014
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Abstract
Temperate forests are considered critical ecosystems for the maintenance of biocultural diversity in the southern South American Andes. In Chile, some of the last remaining continuous temperate forests are restricted to the Andes. Spatially co-occurring, thousands of Mapuche (Mapu=land, Che=people) indigenous people still live in close association with Andean ecosystems. The "knowledge and control of weather" has been a major concern of all mountain cultures, its systematization being one of the stand-out achievements of Andean societies. Our research looked at the traditional weather forecasting system of a Mapuche community from the Araucanía region of southern Chile, and explored what resource management practices are triggered by indicators of a change in the weather. Once obtaining Free Prior Informed Consent, between 2012-13 we conducted participant observation, interviews, and specimen identification tasks. We recorded twelve bird (Üshüm) species and one type of dry foehn-like eastern wind (Puelche), identified by informants as weather indicators. According to villagers, seven of the reported bird species, as well as the wind, descend from the mountains when bad weather conditions (snow, storms and/or strong rain) are imminent. Using birds and the wind as a weather forecasting method provided farmers with a means for reducing uncertainty while improving decisions in resource management, in turn strengthening both their food sovereignty and livelihoods. The importance of properly timing activities was highlighted, especially when it came to protecting herds from storms, firewood collecting, grass harvest and bundling, apple harvest for cedar fabrication, and other weather sensitive activities for the day or week. Furthermore, we found common ground between local observations of birds descending from mountains and scientific research on local avian altitudinal movements. This common ground offers an opportunity for integrating traditional and scientific knowledge for co-monitoring and the revitalization of biocultural diversity - as Mapuche livelihoods are interwoven with both avian natural history and a local sense of co-habitation with birds, forests and mountains
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Biocultural Diversity, Environmental Anthropology, Ethnozoology, Ethnoornithology