ABSTRACT
This chapter asks questions about natural history among the Mende people of rural eastern and southern Sierra Leone. The analysis focuses on two endangered forest mammals—chimpanzee and elephant. There are, to my mind, two main reasons for pursuing this type of enquiry. First, local natural history is often ‘good science’; that is, it makes a worthwhile contribution to the global stock of knowledge concerning plants and animals (Richards 1985, 1991). Second, ‘natural history’ interacts with ‘natural symbols’ in ways that are complex and not always easy to anticipate. The intention is to contribute to discussion of the problem of empiricism and objectivity in (supposedly) pre- or non-scientific cultures in Africa. A long-running debate on this issue (Evans-Pritchard 1937, Horton 1967, Jackson 1989) is of importance to the fields of wildlife conservation and science education as well as to the anthropology of the environment.
