THE ROLE OF THE XAVANTE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

Abstract

There is an urgent demand to evaluate and document the environmental conditions of the territories of indigenous people. This is basic in the efforts to achieve sustainable development goals adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015. The Xavante people are hunters/gatherers and depend on natural resources for their physical, spiritual, and cultural survival. Their lands are localized in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, in a transitional area between the Cerrado vegetation and the Amazon rainforest. They have been developing environmental projects ~in order to manage their territory correctly for decades, as part of their survival strategy. In recent fieldwork, we stated that some major game species may still be abundant in the territory and we suggest that certain wildlife management measures in the past may be responsible for this. We easily registered most game species handled by the Xavantes, except for some edentates that were rarely detected. We confirm the giant anteater as the most vulnerable species to hunting effects. In this article, we point out the main threats for the territory and present new recommendations that may be fundamental for the conservation of biodiversity in the region and the survival of the Xavante people.