Conservation of Marine Birds - Chapter 11: Cultural aspects of seabird conservation

At a global scale, there are two major cultural groups engaged in seabird conservation—Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC) and neocolonial conservationists. With the latter being the dominant perspective in this book, this chapter aspires to bring balance by focusing mainly on the IPLC perspective. Indigenous worldviews predate the emergence of and are therefore not born from a neoclassical worldview that perceives a separation between humanity and nature—with the latter being referred to as ecosystems. The generalized Indigenous worldview perceives humanity and nature existing as interconnected parts of a single system (a.k.a., social-ecological systems), and therefore systems of Indigenous resource management emerged that are founded in a conservation ethic. Aspects of this worldview and approaches to resource management have been adopted by many Local Communities around the world. By understanding this, we can set the stage to build a bridge between both groups in an effort to achieve more effective approaches to seabird conservation.