O Gado que Circulava: Desafios da Gestão Participativa e Impactos da Proibição do Uso do Fogo aos Criadores de Gado de Solta da Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Veredas do Acari

International audienceIn the Cerrado (Savanna), extensive cattle raising on rangelands have been present since the eighteenth century, but this practice has not been fully incorporated in the debate on collaborative management in protected areas. Due to the increasing privatization of rural areas and the creation of protected areas, 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 management in the Sustainable Development Reserve (SDR) Veredas do Acari (Minas Gerais) and to assess the possible coexistence of this traditional practice with the conservation actions. Twenty five interviews were made with the herders who use the SDR. Participative mapping enabled to portray the dynamic and intermittent nature of the occupation of SDR by the cattle. The cattle of each farmer follow a route known to them and that doesn’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 cooperation among herders. Interviews with different locals show the difficulties of cooperation between official resource managers and the herders to build co-management agreements. Because the environmental agency does not recognize 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 recognizing the impact caused by cattle, the farmers blame the eucalyptus plantations established in the 1970s for the most significant environmental problems. Cattle raising in the SDR Veredas do Acari has been the cause of conflict between the farmers and official resource managers, precisely because there are different perceptions about the very nature and origins of environmental problems. However, territorial conflicts in the region are also linked to older questions such the use of fences and the privatization of common areas