Sustained by Snakes? Seasonal Livelihood Strategies and Resource Conservation by Tonle Sap Fishers in Cambodia Sharon E. Brooks & John D. Reynolds & Edward H. Allison Published online: 21 November 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008 Abstract This paper situates concerns for conservation of aquatic snakes and livelihood sustainability in Cambodia within a social–ecological systems context and thereby presents a challenge to conventional species-based conser- vation programmes. Fishing for low-value water snakes has become a widespread activity within the floating commu- nities of Tonle Sap Lake in the last 20 years in response to new market opportunities, provided primarily by a croco- dile farming industry. The scale and intensity of this new form of exploitation and reports of declines in catch per fisher have highlighted this activity as a conservation concern, yet its role within local livelihood strategies was previously unknown. We show that it is of increasing importance to the less well-off, and is linked to higher incomes within this group, where it potentially reduces their vulnerability to fluctuations and declines in fish catches. It is particularly important as a means to smooth seasonality of incomes in this flood pulse-driven social–ecological system. We argue that shifts between snake-hunting and fishing, as a market-driven adaptive livelihood strategy by the poor, may be more compatible with wider ecosystem conservation and development goals than alternatives such as increased fishing effort or converting floodplain habitats for seasonal agriculture. Keywords Adaptive management . Vulnerability . Social– ecological systems . Hunting . Poverty . Aquatic resources . Cambodia Introduction The management of hunting, gathering or fishing activities has been guided by the concept of sustainable exploitation rates. Models to estimate these rates and the management targets for sustainable off-take or harvest have typically been applied to populations of single species, assumed to be living in stable environments and subject to targeted exploitation that can be limited by some form of directed control, such as bag limits or quotas, seasonal bans or restrictions on where the species can be exploited (Milner- Gulland and Mace 1998; Reynolds and Peres 2006). By focusing narrowly on the species and activity in question, these models fail to account for how exploitation of that species fits within both the ecosystem and the livelihood system. Conservation and resource management measures based on these kinds of assessments risk being unachiev- able and irrelevant in a context where the resource users have complex livelihoods that include a variety of agricultural, natural resource exploitation and non-natural resource-based activities, and where the natural resources are harvested from diverse and seasonally and spatially dynamic ecosystems. This is especially the case in the developing countries of the tropics, where small-scale fisheries and local wildlife hunting directly support large Hum Ecol (2008) 36:835–851 DOI 10.1007/s10745-008-9205-2 S. E. Brooks (*) Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK e-mail: seb84@cam.ac.uk J. D. Reynolds Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada E. H. Allison WorldFish Center, PO Box 500, GPO, 10670 Penang, Malaysia E. H. Allison School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK