An Ecological Orientation: How Natural Field Science Became Important in the Peruvian Amazon

The trails at Cocha Cashu Biological Station are laid down according to legacy. The system of trails demarcates the lowland rain forest extending out from a small set of buildings that make up the station. Set against a cashew-shaped lake, a remnant from the rapid movement of the Manu River, the station exists as one of the premier sites in the world to study an intact tropical ecosystem with a full suite of fauna. The trails were laid down to measure one hundred meter transects of forest leading to and from the station. Each trail received a number, starting with one. Over time, trails extended further, filled in gaps, and meandered around tree fall, but each still received a number based on chronology rather than geography. This system allowed researchers to communicate with each other over the exact location of an animal or to evenly measure areas of the forest for species abundance.

This talk situates how scientific expertise has been produced within and around Manu National Park, in Peru (est. 1973). The development of ‘residential knowledge,’ of the sort produced in Cocha Cashu, situates the ways science became significant to conservation activities, themselves occupying nearly one-fifth of South America today. Rather than a fully-fledged discipline developed in museums and laboratories, tropical field science and conservation biology have been place-specific, expansive, and transformational processes developed in conjunction with field stations in remote, sparsely-populated natural areas. The ways science took place created compelling arguments for the protection of large, contiguous natural areas.