O gado que circulava: Desafios da gestão participativa de unidades de conservação nos gerais do norte de Minas

• Autor(a) principal: Borges Lúcio, Sílvia Laine
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Outros Autores: Costa Pereira, Ludivine Eloy, Ludewigs, Thomas
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biodiversidade Brasileira
• Texto Completo: https://revistaeletronica.icmbio.gov.br/BioBR/article/view/367
• topic: Cerrado; gestão participativa; impactos ambientais; pecuária de solta; uso do fogo.; Cerrado; collaborative management; environmental impacts; free-range cattle raising; use of fire

In the Cerrado (Savanna), extensive cattle raising on rangelands have been present sincethe eighteenth century, but this practice has not been fully incorporated in the debate on collaborativemanagement in protected areas. Due to the increasing privatization of rural areas and the creation of protectedareas, local communities are being “surrounded” and often end up being excluded from their traditional territories. What are the barriers for the recognition of this practice as a possibility to conservation objectives?The purpose of this article is to understand the local difficulties in implementing collaborative managementin the Sustainable Development Reserve (SDR) Veredas do Acari (Minas Gerais) and to assess the possiblecoexistence of this traditional practice with the conservation actions. Twenty five interviews were made withthe herders who use the SDR. Participative mapping enabled to portray the dynamic and intermittent natureof the occupation of SDR by the cattle. The cattle of each farmer follow a route known to them and thatdoesn’t overlap with the others’. This knowledge shows some kind of indirect management of the territorythrough the cattle. The rules governing this type of management are informal and based on cooperationamong herders. Interviews with different locals show the difficulties of cooperation between official resourcemanagers and the herders to build co-management agreements. Because the environmental agency does notrecognize these practices as legitimate, it attempts to compensate for the restrictions on use of fire, directlylinked to cattle raising, by promoting other activities such as extractivism and handcrafting. Even recognizingthe impact caused by cattle, the farmers blame the eucalyptus plantations established in the 1970s for themost significant environmental problems. Cattle raising in the SDR Veredas do Acari has been the cause ofconflict between the farmers and official resource managers, precisely because there are different perceptionsabout the very nature and origins of environmental problems. However, territorial conflicts in the region arealso linked to older questions such the use of fences and the privatization of common areas