Andean bears (Tremarctos ornatus) are the last remaining bears in South America. They live throughout the tropical Andes in a large latitudinal (∼11°N–22°S) and elevational gradient (∼200–4700m above sea level (masl)) across diverse habitats. They are threatened throughout their range by habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and hunting, and in many places they overlap with human settlements and agricultural fields, creating competition or conflict for resources. Using a case study in northwestern Peru, we discuss how human activities affect the landscape and, in turn, the ecology of Andean bears, which have been identified as keystone actors in their environment. We then illustrate strategies that have been used to mitigate human impacts through community-based conservation (ie fuel-efficient stoves and environmental education), and how we have come to understand and address the needs of both bears and people through research in both the human and bear dimensions of conservation. We discuss the results of programme evaluations and their effectiveness, and conclude with implications for wildlife management and lessons from collaborating with local communities, governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

ANDEAN BEARS

Andean bears, sometimes called spectacled bears, are declining in numbers due to habitat degradation, habitat fragmentation and unsustainable poaching (Velez-Liendo and García-Rangel 2017), making them globally vulnerable to extinction and endangered in Peru (MINAGRI 2014). Efforts to conserve Andean bears, and other large carnivores, can only succeed if the anthropogenic factors that underlie their endangerment are addressed (eg Peyton 1994).

Andean bears survive in a variety of habitats, including the seasonally dry tropical forests of northwest Peru (Figueroa 2013a), as at our core study area of Cerro Venado (Lambayeque, Peru, 6°26’S, 79°33’W). Because the seasonally dry tropical forest occurs at low elevations, in relatively gentle topography, with a climate that is more conducive to agricultural development than that of this bear's other habitats, most of this habitat has long been subject to strong human impacts, meaning that most Andean bears are now found in other habitats. The pressures that have reduced most lowland tropical dry forests continue to be a risk to the remaining patches and their bears.

Folklore, myths and symbols can influence the way people perceive different species, especially when societies associate multiple and differing meanings to animals. Throughout history and across geographic distribution bears have been portrayed and valued for their beauty, power and strength, their ecological significance, or their kinship to people. However, bears have been disliked and feared for their ferocity and for the negative economic impacts they can inflict on people and their livelihoods. The way bears are portrayed still affects people's attitudes and willingness to support bear conservation. Using a research project from central Italy as example, we highlight how local narratives, attitudes and behaviours towards bears are important considerations for achieving conservation success.

BEAR CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT

The conservation and management of large carnivores often occurs in highly contested and complex environments where diverse and opposing dispositions toward predators can lead to conflict or coexistence situations (Mattson et al 2006; Redpath et al 2015; Frank et al 2019). How individuals and societies live with these species, in both conflict or coexistence, is influenced by values, beliefs, cognitions, emotions and feelings. These factors influence our perceptions of a species as much as economic loss, risk to safety, human fatality, the historical presence or absence of the species and communities’ livelihoods (Kaczensky et al 2004; Glikman et al 2012; McFarlane et al 2007). Understanding the reasons behind people's disposition toward predators can be even more complex when large carnivores have entrenched cultural and historical meanings (Mattson et al 2006) and evoke mythical symbolisms (Harker and Bates 2007). The symbolic status of large carnivores is so significant that biologists have suggested that beliefs about these predators can be more important than the objective biological truth of a species in shaping people's attitudes (Fritts et al 2003). Popular culture and identities associated to large carnivores, positive or negative, can indeed influence whether a human-carnivore encounter will turn into a conflict or coexistence situation, making the difference between failing or succeeding in carnivore conservation (Hazzah et al 2014; Young et al 2015).

Popular culture, including local narratives, folklore and myths, can undermine carnivore conservation efforts by perpetuating negative discourse and behavioural norms, thus jeopardizing the outcome of any management action (Mattson et al 2006).

At the end of Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike's 1965 novel, Toads for Supper, one of the key characters, Aduke Olowu, lover and fiancé of the central protagonist, Amadi Chukwuka, had suffered a mental crisis for which she is taken to the Aro Psychiatric hospital in Abeokuta. The cause is heartbreak. She had received a letter from Amadi which seemed to have broken off their engagement, already under severe pressure, from the tension of ethnic and identity politics, the undercurrent of both the novel, and its imaginary site, the University of Southern Nigeria. In a sense, Ike is an intellectual flâneur, a traveller through the landscape of Nigeria's pioneer centres of knowledge-making, the universities, in a critical era of late colonial and early postcolonial nation-building. His novels thus constitute a formidable archaeology of nationness. That is why they are such vital sources of the modern national cultural memory and its historical narrative.

Through such novels as Toads for Supper and the Naked Gods, for instance, we get a sense of the contradictions, and the emergent ‘Crises in the Temple’ as the famous Nigerian intellectual Dr Pius Okigbo once later described them, in Nigeria's modern universities, actually mirroring the crisis of the modern Nigerian state. This crisis is reflected in the inter-ethnic wrangling between the Igbo and the Yoruba ethnic groups in their quest to inherit the leadership of postcolonial Nigeria. The conflict is telegraphed powerfully in Toads for Supper. So then comes Toads Forever, and Aduke Olowu is still in the psychiatric hospital under the strict care of the Consultant Psychiatrist, Dr Modupe Aina, and the hovering scrutiny of Aduke's room-mate in Oliaku Hall at the University, Bisi, whose guardianship is as fervent as it is suspect. From the opening pages, the situation of the novel is confined to the exact place of its last action, the very ambiguity of it, which many critics have already pointed out, insisting that Toads for Supper ended unsatisfactorily, without resolving the moral contradictions that it had erected.

Contexts and Competing Interpretations

Throughout his work, John Gower showed a deep concern with the roles and responsibilities the secular aristocracy should undertake and how the chivalric ethic might be properly applied. Given the socio-political environment in which he wrote, this is hardly surprising. The English position in the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) became increasingly parlous as Gower's life drew on and this brought with it a general sense of war weariness. In addition, over the course of the 1380s and 1390s, disillusionment grew with Richard II (1377–99), his court and the military community at large. Difficulties with dating Gower's works mean, however, that it is often difficult to link his opinions to specific historical events.1 As a result, a number of intriguing questions arise regarding Gower's attitudes to the chivalrous elite and how these attitudes may have evolved over time.

Various scholars have considered Gower's work in relation to the secular elite, the political world which its members inhabited, and the chivalric ethic that shaped their behaviour. Elliot Kendall, for example, has argued persuasively that a knowledge of the structures and intricacies of aristocratic households and of the wider world of retinues and affinities is vital when seeking to understand Confessio Amantis and suggests that Gower's opinions regarding the importance of a divinely-ordained social hierarchy can be explored in microcosm through imagery associated with the lordly domus magnificencie. Gower's works have also been used to suggest that a sense of disillusionment pervaded England in the final quarter of the fourteenth century and he is said by scholars such as Ben Lowe and Winthrop Wetherbee to have attributed the debilitating prolongation of the Hundred Years War and the degenerate conduct of the bellatores to the failings of the aristocracy and the corruption of chivalry. ‘I do not know how this happened’, Gower tells us in the Mirour de l’Omme (c. 1376–78), ‘nor whence the evil has come, but everyone alive nowadays can see that knighthood has been ruined [or lost]’ [Car ce voit bien cil q’ore vit, / Chivalerie est trop perdue] (23977–80). Many of Gower's remarks imply that when nobles waged war, their motives were sinful and that the consequences were often disastrous for the nation. In Confessio Amantis Genius warns us, repeatedly and emphatically, about the evils of warfare as well as the absurdity of knightly endeavours motivated by love and romantic ideals.

The narratives in the Nibelungenlied and the Volsunga Saga are adventure stories on a level with the classical Iliad and Aeneid and might be partly based on Greco-Roman storytelling. They are stories of hunters and prey – and very well-dressed hunters and prey. It is due, in part, to their sartorial appointments that they are recognized as such – and they die because of it. The chief players – Sigurd and Siegfried – are, in fact, defined by their garments. In this paper, I will explore the costumes worn by key individuals in the Norse Volsunga-Niflung stories and the closely related Middle High German Nibelungenlied, in order to show how the actors are defined as well as disguised by their clothing. Of the numerous medieval epics written down during the Christian period, but undoubtedly reflecting pre-Christian oral traditions, the Volsunga Saga and Nibelungenlied both tell stories of great heroes and tragic deaths, many of them related to dress. Each epic looks at clothing in a different way and the clothing lends richness and texture to the story as a whole, permitting a modern audience to see apparel as status markers, or disguise, or camouflage. The paper also looks at, as a case study, the pivotal role of the disguised otter as a direct cause of mayhem in the Volsunga Saga and alluded to indirectly in the Nibelungenlied in the form of a hunting suit.

The cycle of stories of the Volsungs is found in various manuscripts beginning in the thirteenth century, but is assumed to date from the period before the Conversion of the Nordic area of influence – the 600s, or even earlier – and relates the history of the family that was the progenitor of Scandinavian royalty. The story of the Nibelungs, the Middle High German for Niflung, and usually assumed to be twelfth century, is known from over 35 manuscript fragments, dating as early as the thirteenth century. It covers a brief period, unlike the Volsunga Saga, and gathers players from all over north and central Europe. While the dates of the composition of both stories are hard to determine, the Volsung/Niflung cycle is primarily pre-Christian ,while the Nibelungenlied is more in the style of European courtly tales and is without doubt influenced by Christianity, differentiating between pagans and Christians.

African theatre has a long history steeped in very rich oral traditions. From this ancestry, diverse performance forms and styles have evolved, such that today African theatre boasts of a rich tapestry of performance practices, reaching from the oral to the literary. Martin Banham acknowledges ‘the extraordinary complexity of African performance culture, of its richness, agelessness and beauty’. (2004: xvii) He observes that the ‘variety of performance forms in African societies is immense, ranging from dance to storytelling, masquerade to communal festival, with a vibrant and generally more recent “literary” and developmental theatre’ (xv). Similarly, this variety of forms is replicated in a thematic gamut that embraces practically every sphere of material and spiritual existence: from the social to the political, the sacred to the profane, the esoteric to the everyday. As an area of study, scholars have engaged the phenomenon from a wide range of perspectives. Although much progress has been made in this pursuit, the heterogeneity of performance forms and their structural diversity, as well their productive interactions with Western and Eastern cultures, continue to enrich the variety of forms as well as the vigorous debates they generate on the traditions of African theatre and performance today.

This first open issue of African Theatre signals a departure from the traditional themed format. It compositely exemplifies the acknowledged plethora of performance forms, approaches and perspectives that populate the contemporary field of African theatre and their continuous evolvement informed by the ever-changing realities of everyday encounters, as well as the wealth of discourses they continuously beget. Focusing on case studies, contributors from Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana engage a variety of performance forms from diverse methodological and thematic lookouts. These range from investigations of radical dramatic and popular musical performances, through ‘street theatre’ (festivals and masquerade shows) and popular culture, to applied theatre, dance, audience/spectatorship, cultural performances and folktales. Thematic coverage embraces African-American and African cross-cultural dialogue, choreographic fiesta and the search for national identity, carnivalization and the demystification of ritual essence in emergent Nigerian carnivals. Others include a study of theatre audience behaviour, challenging stigmatization of disability through Theatre for Development, incorporation of indigenous cultural and dramatic elements in play performance, and metaphysical essence in folktale performance.

Particulars of account of Walter of Weston, the king's clerk of works at the palace of Westminster and the Tower of London, for his expenditure on building works at St Stephen's chapel.

Physical description: A roll of one membrane; somewhat soiled and written in faded ink, but otherwise in reasonable condition and wholly legible. Additional heading, acting as a label, appears on m. 1d; marked as enrolled.

Scope of transcription: Transcribed in full.

[m. 1]

Capella Weston

Particulare Walteri de Weston pro nova capella sancti Stephani de anno regni regis Edwardi tercij xj

Anno xj

Die mercurij quinto die Marcij anno xj precepit venerabilis pater H. Lyncoln’ episcopus tunc thesaurarius Angliae incipere ad operandum super predictam novam capellam sancti Stephani infra palacium Westm’ per ordinacionem et avisiamentum Magistri Willelmi de Rameseye magistri cementariorum domini Regis citra Trentam per cartam dicti domini Regis ad terminum vite sue percipienti per diem xij d. et robam per annum

Quo precepto admissi fuerunt die iovis proximo sequenti Thomas de Bagworth, Johannes de Wymundham et Symon de Dors’ iij cementarij qui operabantur super dictam capellam et petras scapulantibus et talliantibus per dies iovis veneris et sabbati usque nonam viz. per ij dies et dj. cuilibet per diem v d. ob. et pro dj. die ij d. ob.q.: iij s. v d. q. preter vadias magistri cementarij de quibus non computavit hic quia assignaverunt per brevem domini Regis ad thesaurariam et camerarios

Summa vadiorum iij s. v d. q.

Die lune x die Marcij Magistro Willelmo de Rameseye magistro cementariorum venit per vices pro vadiis nichil hic.

Thome de Bagworth, Johanni de Wymundham et Johanni de Teset iij cementariis operantibus super dictam capellam et petras scapulantibus ut supra per dies lune martis mercurij jovis veneris et sabbati viz. per vj dies operabiles cuilibet per diem v d. ob.: viij s. iij d.

Willelmo Bele et Gilberto de Styvyngton ij cementariis ibidem petras scapulantibus per dictos vj dies utrique per diem v d.: v s.

Particulars of account of Peter of Bridgnorth, the king's clerk of works at the palace of Westminster and the Tower of London, for his receipts and expenditure on the building works in the palace of Westminster (and St Stephen's chapel), and an account of lead expended (on m. 12d). The calendar is correct for 1347–48. The year is given as 21 Edward III, however, which ended on 29 Sept. 1347, according to the usual way of calculating Exchequer years in this reign.

Physical description: A roll of twelve membranes, sewn end-to-end; in good condition, despite a few holes and stains, and generally legible.

Scope of transcription: Only the total of the receipts and entries relating to St Stephen's chapel and the masons’ lodge.

Collated roll:

E 101/470/19, the counter-roll of Martin of Exning, controller of the king's works at the palace of Westminster and the Tower of London, a duplicate roll of the expenditure only, excluding both the receipts and the lead account, covering the same period.

Physical description: A roll of twelve membranes, sewn end-to-end; mostly in good condition, despite a slight tear on m. 9 and a large hole on m. 10, and generally legible. Additional heading on m. 1d, acting as a label.

Scope of transcription: Entries relating to St Stephen's chapel and the masons’ lodge have been collated.

[m. 1]

Particule compoti Petri de Bruges clerici operacionum Regis in palacio Westm’ de omnibus receptis misis et expensis per ipsum factis a xv die Octobris anno regni Regis Edwardi tercij post conquestum Anglie xxj usque x diem Augusti proximum sequentem

[Recepta] […]

Idem reddit compotum de x s. receptis de thesaurio et camerariis ad receptam Regis viij die Novembris per manus Willelmi de Abbotesburi super empcionem petrarum pro operibus Regis infra palacium predictum

Et de clxx li. receptis de eisdem thesaurio et camerariis ibidem xiij die Decembris de Johanne Wesenham mercatore super hiis operibus

Et de Lxxviij li. xj d. receptis de eisdem thesaurio et camerariis ibidem xviij die Decembris de eodem Johanne Wesenham mercatore super eisdem operibus […]

Enrolled summary of the account rendered at the Exchequer by William Hannay, the king’s clerk of works for building works at the dwelling of the vicars choral of the college of St Stephen, for his receipts and expenses of the same building works, and the construction of part of a new cloister between the chapel and the Receipt of the Exchequer.

Physical description: Part of one membrane of a single rotulet in a large roll of accounts rendered by the king’s officers, written by the clerk of the pipe, and sewn together at the top; in good condition and wholly legible.

Scope of transcription: The total for receipts has been included; the expenses have been transcribed in full.

[rot. 3 m. 1]

Lincoln’

Compotus Willelmi Hannay clerici quem Rex xij die Januarij anno vij per litteras suas patentes assignavit clericum operacionum domorum pro mansione vicariorum de liberi [sic] capella Regis sancti Stephani infra palacium Regis Westm’ necnon cuiusdam claustri inter dictam capellam et domum Recepte scaccarij Regis infra dictum palacium ex precepto et ordinacione Regis et consilij sui de novo faciendi et ad tot lathomos cementarios et alios operarios et laboratores quot pro operacionibus predictis indignerent [sic, recte indigerent] ubicumque inventi fuerint infra libertates vel extra [per] ipsum Willelmum et deputatos suos arestandos et capiendos et eos super operacionibus predictis ad racionabilia vadia Regis eis per ipsum Willelmum solvenda ponendos [et] ad petras maeremium et alia necessaria pro eisdem operacionibus pro denariis Regis per ipsum Willelmum prompte solvenda emenda et providenda et ad cariagium pro eisdem petris maeremio et aliis necessariis infra libertates et extra capiendum sicut continentur in originalia de eodem anno viz. de receptis vadiis custubus et expensis per ipsum factis circa dictas operaciones a predicto xij die Januarij anno vij usque xiiij diem Junij anno viij ut infra

[Recepte] […]

Summa recepte: ml Dccc iiijxx xvij li. xvj s. iij d.

Expense

Idem computat in libera petra de Reigate, marmore, ragg’, asseler, calice, zabulo, maeremio, bordis, lathis, plumbo, tegulis, clavis, gumphis, vertivellis et aliis ferramentis ac aliis diversis necessariis emptis et expenditis super operacionibus predictis una cum cariagio batillagio et portagio earumdem rerum de diversis locis ubi empte fuerunt et provise usque dictam capellam infra palacium predictum necnon vadiis et stipendiis cementariorum, carpentariorum, plumbariorum, tegulagorum [sic], arundinatorum, daubatorum et aliorum laborariorum pro eisdem operacionibus conductorum ac eciam in diversis domibus cameriis latrinis et caminis factis ad tascam per diversas vices infra dictum tempus huius compoti: ml Dcccciiijxx xiij li. xij s. per predictum breve Regis annotatum supra in titulo huius compoti sicut continentur in predicto rotulo de particulis

Once globally abundant ranging across Asia, Europe and North America, grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) have been classified as threatened, endangered or vulnerable in most parts of their range (Weilgus 2002). In Canada, the grizzly bear is classified as ‘Special Concern’ by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC 2018); in the contiguous United States, they are listed as ‘Endangered’ under the Endangered Species Act (US Fish and Wildlife Service 2018). From the 1940s to 1960s, habitat loss resulting from expanding human settlements and agriculture (Shelton 2001) combined with increasing negative interactions between people and bears led to the killing of grizzly bears and dramatic decreases in population sizes (McCracken 1957). Habitat loss from industrial land use practices and conflict with people continues to impact grizzly bear populations in Canada (Benn and Herrero 2002; Nielsen et al 2006).

Human use and development, such as roads, communities, industrial development and recreational use, impact grizzly bear habitat both inside and outside of protected areas in western Canada (Nielsen et al 2006; Sorensen et al 2015). Grizzly bears in western Canada exist in a multi-use landscape with home ranges often overlapping federal and provincial management agency jurisdictions (eg federal and provincial protected areas, other public lands, and private land; Bourbonnais et al 2013). Each of these jurisdictions has different management responses to grizzly bear behaviour and habitat use detailed in their respective management plans. Primary human use in each of these jurisdictions is also variable (eg recreation, private land use, and industrial or commercial use). As a result, how people react to grizzly bears and their expectations regarding bear management change across the landscape. Grizzly bears with home ranges overlapping multiple jurisdictions must navigate a complex variety of human uses and potential management responses.

There are many challenges regarding researching grizzly bear habitat use and activity in areas of human use. Their large home ranges can render data collection challenging across varying spatial scales. The diversity of habitats they can occupy across various densities and intensities of human use can make inferences at the population level difficult to defend. They are also complex animals that can make decisions based on complex stimuli and learn over time, which can render robust statistical analyses at the population scale difficult or inappropriate based on the dataset.

Is kindness wickedness to oneself?

I thought we were taught to love

But not more than ourselves

Why then,

Why then did you give up yourself

Your beauty;

Blossoming hibiscus of the sub-Sahara

Black like ebony

Pine with avid curves

for your love for another?

Mama!

Great twine of the forest

Akiri that brings the trees in the forest together

Lend tomorrow eyes that it may see clearly

Infiltrators!

Be human again

To see the squeezed, exhausted face of the monkey

And hear the shrewd cry of the antelope

For the pains on the donkey's back is obvious.

Palms can never cover pregnancy

Devourers of nature for culture!

The earth mourns in silence

The tree twists and twitches

And the eye of the earth is epileptic already

How unfathomable you have become

Oh loving seasons!

For desires insatiably sought

Moribund