Page 139 [139]
NATURE CONSERVATION AND TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE 137
95-115; Cs. Molnar et al. 2010). It is exemplified by the survey conducted by
Mihók and her collaborators (2015) who found that nearly half of the most
important questions of Hungarian nature conservation stood in direct connection
to landscape use or involved cooperation with people living in the landscape or
with other interest groups. The theme of the relationship between humanity and
the landscape first became an intriguing subject in connection with cultural heritage
(Maffi 2005). Perhaps the finest imprints of the relationship between humanity
and nature in the spiritual legacy of traditional cultures are the stories of folk tales
and myths, which convey the character, morals and solutions of the attitude to
nature of a community which lives in the given landscape (Cs. Molnar 2010:
81-88). Folk art can also be studied from this perspective (Turner et al 2000).
One of the most outstanding Hungarian researchers of the connection between
landscape and human beings, Bertalan Andräsfalvy was led by the study of
embroideries and woven textiles to the interaction between the landscape and
people of Särköz and the Danube bank, at a relatively early date (globally speaking),
in the 1950s (Andrásfalvy 2007). It also took the field of ecological science a long
time to rethink the classical “dehumanized” wilderness and fortress type conservation
approaches, and the Yellowstone type conservation model, and for the “human in
the landscape”, the interdependence and organic interaction of natural and cultural
diversity, to become the central issues (Brown et al. 2005; Zs. Molnar et al. 2009;
Mihok et al. 2015). Ecology has realized that human activity is not solely
destructive, but that it may also enrich natural values (Declaration of Belém [1988],
http 1.). However, this did not become widely recognized before the turn of the
20" and 21* centuries (Agnoletti — Rotherham 2015; Zs. Molnar et al 2019:
157-176).
Today we have many studies from all corners of the world confirming that very
often the values of nature derive from hundreds or thousands of years of human
activity adapted to the character of the given landscape. Ecological processes reflect
the cultural legacy, world view, economic and social positions of those who live
there (Brown et al. 2005; Takeuchi 2010; Babai — Molnar — Molnar 2014; Agnoletti
— Rotherham 2015; Oldén — Halme 2016). Ignorance of these adaptive,
natureforming activities often derives from the fact that a stranger not familiar
with the local conditions cannot notice these often invisible activities fitted
surprisingly snugly and deeply into the landscape. For instance, the Californian
indigenous people shaped and maintained the landscape through conscious
burning; they formed habitat types similar to European wood pastures, with
scattered trees (oak species, Quercus lobata, Quercus dumosa) (Anderson 2005:
1-4). It has also been found that in some rainforest landscapes, especially along
rivers, the richness of species is also considerably attributable to the activity of the
indigenous people. In Mexico, for example, local communities created
multifunctional landscapes alternately used for forestry and horticulture
(Heckenberger et al. 2003; Toledo et al. 2003) The landscapes where the state of
nature is determined by past or current human activity, belong to the category of
cultivated landscapes (Plieninger — Bieling 2012).