Wildlife Depletion Research Articles

Wildlife Depletion in a West African Farm-Forest Mosaic and the Implications for Hunting Across the Landscape

Unsustainable hunting is a threat to conservation and rural livelihoods that depend on bushmeat for food and income. To reduce the pressure on forest-dependent vulnerable species, hunting in farmland might complement offtake from forests and provide a sustainable source of bushmeat. To explore this possibility, we investigated patterns of hunting and wildlife depletion, and integration of hunting into agricultural livelihoods, in an intensively managed farm-forest mosaic landscape. Surveys were conducted across 63 households over a year in a Ghanaian cocoa-farming community surrounded by a timber production forest. The findings indicated a high level of wildlife depletion in the landscape and the local extinction of the largest species, especially in farmland. Most hunting occurred in forests and offtake from farmland was low, yet hunting in farmland was disproportionately common relative to its coverage in the landscape. Most farmland hunting was opportunistic and integrated with agricultural activities. Our findings suggest that intensively used farmland provides little opportunity to reduce hunting pressure in forests.

The importance of bushmeat in the livelihoods of West African cash-crop farmers living in a faunally-depleted landscape.

Bushmeat is an important resource in the livelihoods of many rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and may be a crucial safety-net for the most vulnerable households, especially during times of economic hardship. However, little is known about the impacts of wildlife depletion on these functions. This study quantifies the role of bushmeat in diversified rural household economies in a wildlife depleted forest-farm landscape in Ghana, assessing its importance overall, as well as differentiated by the relative vulnerability of households. Using repeat socioeconomic questionnaires (N=787) among 63 households over a one-year period, the following hypotheses were tested: (a) vulnerable households harvest more bushmeat; (b) bushmeat contributes a greater proportion of household production in vulnerable households; (c) bushmeat is more important for cash income than consumption in vulnerable households; and (d) bushmeat sales are more important for vulnerable households. The bushmeat harvest value averaged less than US$1.0 per day for 89% of households and comprised less than 7% of household production value. Household wealth and gender of the household head had little effect on the importance of bushmeat. However, bushmeat harvest and sales were highest during the agricultural lean season. Overall, most harvested bushmeat (64%) was consumed, enabling households to spend 30% less on meat/fish purchases. These findings suggest that, despite heavily depleted wildlife and diversified livelihoods, bushmeat continues to have an important role in rural livelihoods by acting as a safety net for income smoothing and reducing household expenditure during times of economic hardship.

Innovation and Misoneism during the Reign of Emperor Yoḥannǝs IV (1872–1889)

The article attempts to examine the character and extent of innovation and misoneism during the reign of Yoḥannǝs, i.e. the period between the largely frustrated aspirations of Tewodros and of more substantial achievements of Mǝnilǝk. The study suggests that the reign of Yoḥannǝs in fact witnessed changes in many fields of life. These included improvements in communication between Ethiopia and the outside world; the advent of new imports; changes in land tenure and class relations; the strengthening of church land-holding; attempted action against slavery and the slave trade; increasing diffusion of fire-arms; the forced conversion of Muslims, and prohibition of foreign missionaries; the banning of tobacco; the depletion of wild-life; the introduction of a national flag, the appointment of a foreign consul abroad, and the building of a church in Jerusalem.

Climate Change, Effects and Adaptation Strategies; Implication for Agricultural Extension System in Nigeria

Tackling climate change is one of the biggest challenges this generation faces. African countries, Nigeria inclusive are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their dependence on rain fed agriculture, high levels of poverty, low levels of human and physical capital, inequitable land distribution and poor infrastructure. Generally climate change is already affecting agricultural activities with the most devastating adverse effects in Nigeria as: extreme weather condition, frequent drought ,increased environmental damage, increased infestation of crops by pests and diseases, depletion of household assets, increased biodiversity loss, depletion of wildlife and other natural resource base, changes in the vegetation type, decline in forest resources, decline in soil conditions, increased health risks and the spread of infectious diseases changing livelihood systems.. These conditions emanating from climate change are bound to militate against agricultural production (crop, livestock forest and fishery resources), nutritional and health statuses and the general livelihood activity of the people. Therefore building up resilience and developing adaptation strategies becomes very important if agricultural production in the country will experience any boost. This paper concludes that the agricultural Extension system in the country need to generally revisit its role and in particular the role of the Extension agents. This is very important since the challenge of climate change if neglected will surely render the effort of increasing food production through the dissemination of technical information fruitless.

Benefits of wildlife consumption to child nutrition in a biodiversity hotspot

Terrestrial wildlife is the primary source of meat for hundreds of millions of people throughout the developing world. Despite widespread human reliance on wildlife for food, the impact of wildlife depletion on human health remains poorly understood. Here we studied a prospective longitudinal cohort of 77 preadolescent children (under 12 y of age) in rural northeastern Madagascar and show that consuming more wildlife was associated with significantly higher hemoglobin concentrations. Our empirical models demonstrate that removing access to wildlife would induce a 29% increase in the numbers of children suffering from anemia and a tripling of anemia cases among children in the poorest households. The well-known progression from anemia to future disease demonstrates the powerful and far-reaching effects of lost wildlife access on a variety of human health outcomes, including cognitive, motor, and physical deficits. Loss of access to wildlife could arise either from the diligent enforcement of existing conservation policy or from unbridled unsustainable harvest, leading to depletion. Conservation enforcement would enact a more rapid restriction of resources, but self-depletion would potentially lead, albeit more slowly, both to irrevocable local wildlife extinctions and loss of the harvested resource. Our research quantifies costs of reduced access to wildlife for a rural community in Madagascar and illuminates pathways that may broadly link reduced natural resource access to declines in childhood health.

Changes in Beliefs and Perceptions About the Natural Environment in the Forest-Savanna Transitional Zone of Ghana: The Influence of Religion

The potential of traditional natural resources management for biodiversity conservation and the improvement of sustainable rural livelihoods is no longer in doubt. In sub-Saharan Africa, extensive habitat destruction, degradation, and severe depletion of wildlife, which have seriously reduced biodiversity and undermined the livelihoods of many people in rural communities, have been attributed mainly to the erosion of traditional strategies for natural resources management. In Ghana, recent studies point to an increasing disregard for traditional rules and regulations, beliefs and practices that are associated with natural resources management. Traditional natural resources management in many typically indigenous communities in Ghana derives from changes in the perceptions and attitudes of local people towards Tumi, the traditional belief in super natural power suffused in nature by Onyame, the Supreme Creator Deity. However, this is closely entwined with ecological, demographic and economic factors. Whilst these factors have driven the need to over-exploit natural resources, a situation which threatens the sustainability of community forests including sacred groves, religion has been used to justify such actions. This paper explores changes in Tumi and the sustainability of sacred groves in the forest-savanna transitional zone in Ghana. It would confirm that changes in traditional animist beliefs, such as tumi, which informs the worldview of local people and underlies traditional natural resources management, is mainly due to the advances made by Christianity and Islam.

Furthering Their Own Demise: How Kansa Indian Death Customs Accelerated Their Depopulation

This essay examines the survival of the Kansa Indians prior to major contact with Euro-Americans, how Euro-American contact disrupted their survival, and how the Kansa responded to those disruptions. The research presented here focuses on the impact of wildlife depletion and Euro-American diseases leading up to the tribe's massive depopulation in the late nineteenth century. The most striking finding is that the cultural practices and religious customs with which the Kansa responded to these tremendous changes made matters worse for them. Their adherence to death customs, in particular, accelerated their depopulation when they endured back-to-back years of epidemics and starvation. This raises important questions about the specific influence of death customs and other practices used by Amerindian groups in response to depopulation following contact with Euro-Americans.

Reduced Impact Logging Road Issues in Tropical Forests

Road design, construction, and maintenance practices need to be significantly improved in many logging operations being undertaken in tropical forests worldwide. Reduced impact logging is a program designed to achieve more cost-effective and sustainable logging practices through good stand inventories, sound silvicultural practices, less waste and damage in the operations, and replanting where necessary. The program also involves design and construction of improved logging roads. Many roads being constructed and used today are poorly built, poorly drained, and poorly maintained. Resulting impacts include unnecessarily high road costs, inefficient logging operations, and significant negative environmental impacts. Little consideration is given to long-term or full life-cycle costs of the roads. These are not new problems. The objectives of this paper are to identify ongoing common problems and recommend practical solutions, reiterate the need for good basic engineering practices, and highlight some of the negative impacts of poor engineering practices. Key problems that appear to cause unnecessarily high road costs and inefficient logging operations include inadequate road surface drainage, excessively wide roads and roads built under inconsistent design standards, inadequate use of available road surfacing materials, inadequate road maintenance, and poor road location and the subsequent need for road reconstruction. A variety of other road drainage, materials, and erosion control issues also need improving. Social and environmental issues related to roads and their access include colonization and development along the road corridor, illegal logging and subsequent deforestation, bush meat hunting and wildlife depletion, spread of diseases, and other land use changes. Road management and access control are needed along with improved design, construction, and maintenance practices.

Importance, cause and effect of bushmeat hunting in the Udzungwa Mountains, Tanzania: Implications for community based wildlife management

Community Based Wildlife Management (CBWM) has been suggested as a conservation strategy in response to bushmeat hunting in the Udzungwa Mountains within the Eastern Afromontane biodiversity hotspot. The feasibility of CBWM based on meat cropping was therefore evaluated in New Dabaga/Ulangambi Forest Reserve (NDUFR). Comparison of relative wildlife densities with West Kilombero Scarp Forest Reserve, which is subject to only low hunting pressure, indicate that most relevant populations are severely depleted ( Cephalophus monticola, C. harveyi and C. spadix, Potamochoerus larvatus) and hence that sustainable harvesting currently is not possible in NDUFR. Records of catch from hunters in the villages surrounding NDUFR indicate that bushmeat is of relatively low importance in terms of use and contribution to protein intake. Proximity to NDUFR and secondarily population size in the different villages is positively correlated with hunting intensity and depletion of wildlife. Comparisons between hunters and non-hunters in terms of wealth measures show that hunting is linked to poverty and low protein intake. An estimation of maximum sustainable harvest in NDUFR reveals that CBWM only has limited capacity to reduce these causes of hunting, maintain the communities’ interest and offset the opportunity costs of conservation. Results of this study suggest that conservation efforts in NDUFR should focus on protecting wildlife against exploitation instead of encouraging use and dependence through CBWM. Supporting efforts should attempt to facilitate a complete shift to domestic sources of meat, by increasing the number of domestic animals in the poorest part of the population.

Including Spatial Heterogeneity and Animal Dispersal When Evaluating Hunting: a Model Analysis and an Empirical Assessment in an Amazonian Community

: Hunting in tropical forests is typically most intense near human settlements, and this creates gradients of decreasing animal densities toward those settlements. Within the context of this spatial pattern, we evaluated the status of game in the hunting grounds of an indigenous community in eastern Ecuador. We constructed a spatially explicit model of hunter‐prey interactions that mimicked the hunting in the village and included realistic animal‐dispersal rules. We compared predictions from the model with distributions of animal harvest rates and catch per unit effort of 12 game species. Six species were overharvested in part or all of the area, and two other species were probably being overharvested, although high dispersal rates complicated the interpretation. We then compared our method with methods that have been used previously. We argue that because our method provides information about the spatial extent of overharvesting, it could be particularly useful in informing decision makers about where to establish no‐take areas and could therefore aid in improving the sustainability of hunting in tropical forests.

An African Commitment to Ecological Conservation: The Shona Concepts of Ukama and Ubuntu

Largely as a result of population pressure, many parts of the African continent are experiencing a level of environmental degradation and depletion of wild life, which, in terms of its significance for the welfare of future generations, is comparable to the pollution presently being created by industrial activity in other continents. Yet traditional African ethics in general recognized the intimate bond between men and their environment, the debt that the members of any generation owed to their forebears, and their consequent responsibility to posterity. It is further argued that this ethic was an adjunct of ancestor worship, and also that the roots of an ethic extending this responsibility beyond the limits of blood relationship can be found in Shona proverbs, which the author cites.

The Oil Industry as an Underlying Factor in the Bushmeat Crisis in Central Africa

Abstract: Although deforestation and habitat loss are considered the main causes of wildlife depletion, the bushmeat trade is one of the foremost threats to biodiversity conservation in central Africa. In 1997 and 1998, we set up a bushmeat trade monitoring program in the town of Gamba to assess the pressure exerted on wildlife by the human population attracted by the oil industry in the Gamba Protected Areas Complex. During 279 days of observations, we recorded 19 mammal species, 4 bird species, and 7 reptile taxa, for a total of 2845 animal carcasses with an estimated weight of 189,728 kg. Even though the bushmeat trade is illegal in protected areas, calculation of annual production levels and hunting yields showed that this trade is not sustainable for some species. We calculated the ratio of bushmeat found in the markets of Gamba to the human population. Compared with other Gabonese towns, Gamba had the highest ratio in the country. We suggest that the oil industry is another contributor to the bushmeat crisis in central Africa. It is important to recognize the role of oil companies in the current crisis in order to heighten the awareness of the public and of oil companies and to seek ways of lessening the impact of the oil industry on the bushmeat trade in central Africa.

Pan's Travail: Environmental Problems of the Ancient Greeks and Romans

In Pan's Travail, Hughes examines the environmental history of the classical period and argues that the decline of ancient civilizations resulted in part from exploitation of the natural world. Focusing on Greece and Rome, as well as areas subject to their influences, Hughes offers a detailed look at the impact of humans and their technologies on the ecology of the Mediterranean basin. He explores the complex relationships of human culture and the environment with topics that include deforestation and overgrazing, soil erosion, depletion of wildlife and natural resources, pollution, and urban problems such as water supply and sewage disposal. He also compares the ancient world's environmental problems to those of other eras and discusses attitudes toward nature expressed in Greek and Latin literature.

Native Americans in the Fur Trade and Wildlife Depletion

Native Americans are generally acknowledged as the New World's first and foremost environmentalists. Native American religions stress that people are coequal with nature, descendants of Grandmother Earth. How then, could some of them have depleted wildlife for the fur trade, as occurred in the eastern United States and Canada by the mid-19th century? The most comprehensive discussion of that question published to date is Calvin Martin's Keepers of the Game. ' Martin proposed that Indians believed their catastrophic post-contact epidemics were caused by wildlife diseases, which together with a Europeanization of their values, shattered their protohistoric deferential relationships with wildlife spirits. However, various authors subsequently have criticized Martin's interpretations as unsubstantiated and have advanced their own solutions to the question, focusing primarily on the political and economic advantages of the fur trade to Native Americans.2 This paper examines Native Americans (predominantly Menominee and Winnebago) involved in the fur trade of Green Bay, Wisconsin before European-American settlement (ca 1620-1836,) when Indians were almost the sole hunters and trappers in the region. By investigating fur trade ecology, economics, and ideology, the paper attempts to explain why they depleted wildlife populations. 118