Contributed by Olivia Sylvester * *This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. Information on the Centre is available on the web at www.idrc.ca; I was also supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada through a grant rewarded to Dr. Iain Davidson-Hunt. Why do youth use forest foods and medicines? This is a question I set out to answer during...
Contributed by Nemer E. Narchi During the year of 2007 I was walking down the streets of La Paz, Bolivia, as part of a group of anthropology students waiting for some others to arrive and go down to the Bolivian Amazon to learn field methods in anthropology as part of the Tsimane Amazonian Panel Study summer course. Walking on Cerro Cumbre, where the famous mercado de las brujas (the witchesʼ market) can be found, I saw something that sparked...
Contributed by Michelle Baumflek Medicinal plants and fungi play important roles in the health of Maliseet people from northern Maine, USA. A critical aspect of health sovereignty for this community is being able to locate and have access to these plants. Commercial development on their traditional gathering sites and restricted access to privately owned lands limit the ability of the Maliseet to gather medicinal plants. Habitat modeling can...
Contributed by Morgan Ruelle Subsistence farmers in the Semien Mountains of Ethiopia maintain a rich legacy of plant diversity, including many plants they know how to use as medicine. These farming communities are encountering a number of complex changes, including population growth, new road construction and local effects of global climate change. Favorable market prices induce farmers to increase production of a few cash crops, often...
Contributed by Jeffrey Wall In the fourth century BCE, the Greek traveler Xenophon reported that chestnut was a prominent food for people of the Caucasus (Xenophon ). The tree and its use as food and timber first spread from this region around the Black Sea and eventually to Central and Western Europe (see Figures 3 and 4). The Caucasus and Eastern Turkey remain the center of highest...
