Recollections, reflections, and revelations: ethnobiologists and their “First Time” in the field

For nearly a century, ethnobiologists have collaborated with local community members in their efforts to document and safeguard our planet’s rich and varied biocultural heritage. Work in ethnobiology and ethnomedicine, including ethnobotany, ethnozoology, and ethnoecology, necessarily entails meticulous and rigorous systematic observation of the myriad ways indigenous and local communities cognize, utilize, and classify the floral and faunal resources on which they depend for survival. By its very nature, ethnobiology synthesizes humanism, ethnoscience, and empirical data collection and hypothesis-testing. Clearly, ethnographic and methodological flexibility are critical historically to the present and future successes of the programs we create and carry forth into the world. The practice of ethnobiology is itself inevitably capable of advancing pedagogies with real and lasting applications for students with only cursory knowledge of first-hand field experiences. Medical ethnobiology and ethnobotany, including ethnopharmacology, ethnoecology, conservation biology, and their related fields and approaches, are poised to evaluate carefully the richly and distinctly expressive component of our projects, wherever they are located geographically and situated culturally. Personal experiences, narratives, and reflections are occasionally minimized to varying degrees in the now-expansive body of ethnobiological and ethnomedical literature. Although notable exceptions certainly exist, our goal in the next months is to expand the scope of dialogue by turning attention to the most engaging forms of ethnography within ethnobiological accounts--that is, we seek to capture the stories, chronicles, imaginations, and memoirs of ethnnobiologists. Every few months the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine will begin to offer editorials drafted by several international ethnobiologists, who report their first-hand recollections of their earliest field experiences. These, we believe, are uniquely capable of rendering