| Iriartea deltoidea is an abundant palm growing from Nicaragua to Bolivia. The stem is harvested for construction, furniture making, and handicrafts. Because the palm is killed when it is harvested, the palm's economic usefulness has led to local over harvesting in some areas. The objective of my study was to determine population parameters for this palm and to better understand the potential for sustainable harvesting. Methods included demographic surveys, measurements of growth, mortality and fecundity, and phenological studies in mature, secondary, and dissected forests at Jatun Sacha Research Station in Amazonian Ecuador. I focused on identifying the life history stages most sensitive to change in order to help develop guidelines for sustainable harvesting. I identified these stages using sensitivity and elasticity analyses. Simulations of harvesting suggest that harvesting may be sustainable (lambda ;Ethnographic fieldwork about market patterns and decision making among harvesters indicate the harvest pressures influencing Iriartea demography. The methods demonstrate an approach for assessing ecological and economic influences on the sustainability of a particular species or set of species. They also demonstrate the inter-linked nature of ecological approaches and economic factors in assessing sustainability. Management recommendations are based on developing scenarios using local population densities coupled with a range of harvesting rates to estimate the effects of harvesting tall adults and of sparing juveniles and small adults when pastures are cleared, then abandoned to allow secondary forest succession. |
