Assessing People's Perceptions of Forests in Danau Sentarum Wildlife Reserve [Kalimantan, Indonesia]

Previous research identified three important issues of relevance to forest people's roles in sustainable forest management which we address here: the presence of a "conservation ethic", a feeling of closeness to the forest, and a significant forest-culture link. In this paper we examine a method (the Galileo), recently pre-tested for this purpose in West Kalimantan, which we hope can help us to assess such issues quickly, reliably and in a quantitative manner amenable to use by would-be assessors of various educational and experiential levels. We describe the method, suggest improvements for future tests, and present some of our findings from West Kalimantan. We conclude with questions that emerged during our pre-test, and others that remain for subsequent research. [author]