Many wild habitats are unique and quite localised. The information to survive there requires expert, local information.

This is certainly the case with many hunter-gatherers. They cannot just move anywhere and remain as hunter-gatherers. Their awareness of the right way to sustain themselves from the land is insolvably linked to the land from which they sustain themselves.

Even in bigger, more widely recognised habitats like rainforest, savannah, temperate or boreal forest, there's a large amount of variation, both in foliage and local terrain.

However well you know the common species which populate a particular habitat, becoming familiar with your way around a selected area of wild country requires that you build a psychological map of the area and, over the course of time the local data that goes with this.

From a purely survival-oriented perspective you need to know where are the animal trails, the migration routes? Where do different species of animal like to feed? Where is the best fishing? Where do particular species of useable trees and wild food plants grow?

Wherever you go, the people that know the land best are the locals. These are the people that have spent time on the land, in the woods and on the water.

However good your general bushcraft and survival talents are, there is always much value in gaining the local viewpoint.

Better still , gain understanding from native peoples, whose people have lived near to the land since ancient times. Gaining aboriginal knowledge is priceless.

So it is when finding out about particular environments, you should endeavour to include the native perspective.

The interaction required to gain this viewpoint goes miles past the characteristic lightweight tourist experience. As an independent traveller, I have experienced this superficiality from Scandinavia to Africa to Australia. Most tourists just don't demand to know any great detail about indigenous cultures. They want to take a photograph and move on.

If you want to know more, this may be enormously annoying. If you would like to know as much as humanly possible, desire to soak up the local information and the indigenous culture, you typically have to work much more to reach your goal.

As a consequence, we look to our native hosts to offer a view of their world which is both detailed and truthful. We stay with them and we work to their timetable.

This effort is well worth it, however as it imbues us with a view of the land, the terrain, the trees, the plants, the animals - the nature of the country we are travelling in - that we'd otherwise simply not obtain.