Offering intimate and unforgettable descriptions of the birds and 
people that inhabit Honduran landscapes, Seven Names for the 
Bellbird showcases the deep-rooted local traditions of bird 
appreciation and holds them up as a model for sound management 
of the environment. Through his recounting of local lore, author 
Mark Bonta makes the interaction between culture and avifauna in 
Latin America a key to better understanding the practice of 
biodiversity protection. He offers a significant contribution to the 
scarce anthropological and geographical literature on 
human-environment relationships in Central America and also 
provides stories of native birds and their human observers.

    After a decade in the field in Honduras, Bonta came to realize 
that, contrary to outsiders’ general beliefs, the society he observed 
was predisposed "to like birds, to observe birds, to weave them 
into folklore, and to protect them on private property." Bonta 
argues that if North Americans and Europeans were to pay real 
attention to local knowledge and practice—instead of condemning 
them out-of-hand and imposing upon them new beliefs and 
techniques—they would learn that rural cultures offer alternative 
ways of accommodating habitats and wildlife.
 
    Bonta uses the concept of "conservation geography"—the study 
of human beings and their landscapes, with natural resource 
conservation in the forefront—to advance his argument. He 
describes many cases in which local individuals and their 
traditional knowledge of birds contribute to a de facto variety of 
bird conservation that precedes or parallels "official" bird 
protection efforts.

    This book is not offered as "proof" that all birds have happy 
futures in the Neotropics. Bonta recognizes the ravages of both 
human pressures and natural disasters on the birds and forests. But 
he shows that in many instances, birds are safe and even thrive in 
the presence of local people, who "celebrate them just as often as 
they persecute them." 

_________________________________________________________

MARK BONTA is an assistant professor of geography at Delta 
State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. In the early 1990s, he 
was a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, and he has returned 
many times since, living and working in the province of Olancho. 
He continues to participate in a wide variety of local environmental 
projects in Olancho, including the protection of the Sierra de 
Agalta National Park and the monitoring of the endemic tree cycad 
Dioon mejlae.



What people are saying about this book

". . . beautifully written, and deserves to be on the naturalist’s 
bookshelf alongside the classic works of Aldo Leopold, Peter 
Matthiessen, and John McPhee."—Gregory Knapp

". . . a fresh (and refreshing) account of the intimate interaction 
among the Honduran landscape, birds, and local inhabitants."
—Miles Richardson, Louisiana State University