This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Black-necked swans, spot-flanked gallinules, southern lapwings, austral thrushes and dozens of other bird species fly across the Río Cruces Wetland, carrying the biocultural memory of the territory. Both resident birds and species that migrate throughout the year bear witness to the many changes this landscape has undergone over time.
Located in Chile's Los Ríos Region, this nature sanctuary is also the country's first Ramsar site. Here, the connection between people and birds runs deep. Through their memories, knowledge and experiences, residents of the rural communities surrounding the wetland have helped reconstruct the history of an ecosystem that has undergone profound transformations.
The 1960 earthquake, pollution of the Cruces River, the decline of river navigation and urban expansion are among the changes that have reshaped the relationship between communities and their territory. A study led by Cristóbal Pizarro, a researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB) and director of the Laboratory for Anthropocene Studies (LEA), sheds light on this context. Published in the journal Ecology & Society, the study brought together an interdisciplinary team that worked alongside residents of 10 rural communities between 2019 and 2023 to explore the connections between biodiversity, memory, birds and territory.
The research sought to identify which birds act as sentinels of biocultural memory and landscape transformations, while documenting the places and events that form part of the collective memory of the wetland and sanctuary, which extends over more than 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres). "Birds hold the memory of the territory and allow people to recall events of profound significance, such as the environmental disaster caused by pollution of the Cruces River. In this case, the migration and mass die-off of black-necked swans had a very deep impact on the communities living in the surrounding area," says Pizarro, who is also a researcher at the University of Concepción and holds a Ph.D. in social and ecological sustainability from the University of Waterloo in Canada.
The study found that participants recognized 87 bird species and helped identify 27 sites of particular biocultural significance, where the importance of biodiversity is intertwined with local knowledge, memories, experiences and ways of inhabiting the territory. Through birds, community members were also able to identify less visible changes, such as species that had disappeared from certain areas and others that had become more frequent in particular parts of the sanctuary. "People recognized 73% of the species recorded by the nature sanctuary.
This empirical finding shows that communities possess in-depth knowledge of biodiversity and provides a foundation for developing nature-based solutions, community monitoring and other ways of involving people both in generating information and in restoring ecosystems and species of conservation concern," says the IEB researcher. One of the most significant findings was that 93% of the identified sites are located outside the sanctuary's boundaries, demonstrating that the communities' biocultural memory extends beyond the formal limits of the protected area. Achieving these results required a shift away from traditional approaches to research.
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