Abstract
International efforts to address climate change by reducing tropical deforestation increasingly rely on indigenous reserves
as conservation units and indigenous peoples as strategic partners. Considered win-win situations where global
conservation measures also contribute to cultural preservation, such alliances also frame indigenous peoples in diverse
ecological settings with the responsibility to offset global carbon budgets through fire suppression based on the presumed
positive value of non-alteration of tropical landscapes. Anthropogenic fire associated with indigenous ceremonial and
collective hunting practices in the Neotropical savannas (cerrado) of Central Brazil is routinely represented in public and
scientific conservation discourse as a cause of deforestation and increased CO2 emissions despite a lack of supporting
evidence. We evaluate this claim for the Xavante people of Pimentel Barbosa Indigenous Reserve, Brazil. Building upon
23 years of longitudinal interdisciplinary research in the area, we used multi-temporal spatial analyses to compare land
cover change under indigenous and agribusiness management over the last four decades (1973–2010) and quantify the
contemporary Xavante burning regime contributing to observed patterns based on a four year sample at the end of this
sequence (2007–2010). The overall proportion of deforested land remained stable inside the reserve (0.6%) but increased
sharply outside (1.5% to 26.0%). Vegetation recovery occurred where reserve boundary adjustments transferred lands
previously deforested by agribusiness to indigenous management. Periodic traditional burning by the Xavante had a large
spatial distribution but repeated burning in consecutive years was restricted. Our results suggest a need to reassess
overreaching conservation narratives about the purported destructiveness of indigenous anthropogenic fire in the cerrado.
The real challenge to conservation in the fire-adapted cerrado biome is the long-term sustainability of indigenous lands and
other tropical conservation islands increasingly subsumed by agribusiness expansion rather than the localized subsistence
practices of indigenous and other traditional peoples.
Citation: Welch JR, Brondı´zio ES, Hetrick SS, Coimbra CEA Jr (2013) Indigenous Burning as Conservation Practice: Neotropical Savanna Recovery amid Agribusiness Deforestation in Central Brazil. PLoS ONE 8(12): e81226. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081226
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