Hunting of mammal species in protected areas of the southern Bahian Atlantic Forest, Brazil L UCIANA C. CASTILHO,KRISTEL M. DE V LEESCHOUWER,E.J.MILNER-GULLAND and A LEXANDRE S CHIAVETTI Abstract To investigate the practice of hunting by local peo- social and cultural traditions (Bennett & Robinson, ; ple in the southern Bahia region of Brazil and provide infor- Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, mation to support the implementation of the National Action ). However, wildlife harvest has reached unsustainable le- Plan for Conservation of the Central Atlantic Forest vels in many places because of the increasing human popu- Mammals, we conducted interviews with residents of lation and demand for wild meat (Peres, ; Bennett et al., three protected areas and a buffer zone. Thirty-seven percent ), improved hunting technologies and increased access of respondents stated that they had captured an animal op- to forests (Bennett et al., ;Fa&Brown,). Besides portunistically, % hunted actively and %didnothunt. causing species declines or extinctions (Cullen et al., ; The major motivation for hunting was consumption but peo- Corlett, ; Peres & Palacios, ), overhunting can affect ple also hunted for medicinal purposes, recreation and retali- the ecological functionality of ecosystems (Cullen et al., ; ation. The most hunted and consumed species were the paca Wright et al., ; Peres et al., ), as well as local commu- Cuniculus paca, the nine-banded armadillo Dasypus novem- nities that depend on the consumption of wild meat for sub- cinctus and the collared peccary Pecari tajacu; threatened spe- sistence (Milner-Gulland et al., ). The importance of cies were rarely hunted. Opinions varied on whether wildlife hunting in household economies varies depending on socio- was declining or increasing; declines were generally attributed economic factors such as level of education (Nielsen & to hunting. Our findings suggest there is illegal hunting for Meilby, ), wealth, household size (Foerster et al., ), consumption in and around protected areas of the region. livestock ownership (Loibooki et al., )andage(Melo Management efforts should prioritize fairness in the expropri- et al., ). Unsustainable hunting is a major concern ation process for people who must be relocated, and adopt an both for wildlife conservation and with respect to the well- approach to wildlife management that involves residents being of the people that subsist on wild meat (Redford, living around the protected areas, and considers their needs. ; Nasi et al., ). In Brazil, hunting is illegal (Federal Law /—Law of Keywords Brazil, hunting, protected area, randomized re- Environmental Crimes and Decree /), and penal- sponse technique, semi-structured interviews, threatened ties are more severe for hunting inside protected areas and mammals, wild meat, wildlife conservation for the hunting of threatened species (Art. Federal Law Supplementary material for this article is available at /). Nonetheless, hunting is widespread (Carvalho & https://doi.org/./S Morato, ; El Bizri et al., ) and has been cited as a major threat to wildlife in the protected areas of the Atlantic Forest (Chiarello, ; Canale et al., ; Introduction Schiavetti et al., ), the Amazon (Carvalho & Pezzuti, ) and other regions in the north-east of the country unting in tropical forests provides nutrition and in- (Fernandes-Ferreira et al., , ). Subsistence is the Hcome for local communities and is deeply rooted in main reason for hunting, particularly in indigenous and traditional communities (Peres & Nascimento, ; Hanazaki et al., ; Barbosa et al., ; Minzenberg & LUCIANA C. CASTILHO* (Corresponding author) Graduate Program in Ecology Wallace, ). However, recreational activity and trade and Biodiversity Conservation, State University of Santa Cruz, Rodovia Ilhéus-Itabuna, km16 Salobrinho, CEP 45.662-090, Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil are also motivations for hunting (Chiarello, ; Alves E-mail [email protected] et al., ; Fernandes-Ferreira et al., ; El Bizri et al., KRISTEL M. DE VLEESCHOUWER Centre for Research and Conservation, Royal ). Threatened mammals have been captured for the Zoological Society of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium pet trade (Fernandes-Ferreira et al., ; Nascimento E. J. MILNER-GULLAND Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, et al., ) or killed for consumption (Castilho et al., ; and Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Melo et al., ; Morcatty & Valsecchi, ), traditional ALEXANDRE SCHIAVETTI Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, State University of Santa Cruz, Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil medicine (Alves, ; Ribeiro et al., ), or in retaliation for wildlife-related damage (Carvalho & Morato, ). *Also at: Centre for Research and Conservation, Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium In an attempt to mitigate threats to threatened species in Received February . Revision requested April . Brazil, National Action Plans have been developed to iden- Accepted July . First published online November . tify and prioritize conservation actions (ICMBio, ). The Oryx, 2019, 53(4), 687–697 © 2017 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605317001247 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.229, on 24 Sep 2021 at 14:29:11, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605317001247 688 L. C. Castilho et al. Atlantic Forest receives special attention because it is con- southern Bahia. There are c. private properties in the sidered to be a hotspot for biodiversity (Myers et al., four areas. ). Major threats to species of the Atlantic Forest are Una Biological Reserve (IUCN category Ia) comprises the increasing human population and associated activities, one of the largest remnants of Atlantic Forest in southern such as deforestation, hunting and illegal wildlife trade Bahia (Schroth et al., ). It was established in (ICMBio, ). In a National Action Plan was created December and expanded from , to , ha in to protect threatened mammals of the Central Atlantic December . At the same time, in December , the Forest, with the aim of increasing the population viability Reserve’s original buffer zone was designated Una Wildlife of its target species and improving the quality of their habi- Refuge (, ha, IUCN category III). Serra das Lontras tats (ICMBio, ). For the southern Bahia region one of National Park (, ha, IUCN category II) was established the main goals of this Action Plan is to decrease hunting in June and comprises one of the last remnants of mon- pressure on target species within key conservation areas tane Atlantic Forest in north-eastern Brazil (Schroth et al., (ICMBio, ). ). The Park has a buffer zone of , ha. The law of Our research aims to improve understanding of the prac- the National System of Conservation Units (Art. and tice of hunting by local people in the southern Bahia region. Federal Law ./) states that all privately owned Recording information on sensitive and illegal behaviour areas inside Una Biological Reserve and Serra das Lontras such as hunting inside and around protected areas is challen- National Park should be expropriated, whereas private ging, especially when residents are aware of the illegality of land ownership is allowed within Una Wildlife Refuge, as the activity. Novel approaches have emerged to obtain long as land use is compatible with the conservation more accurate information about such sensitive behaviours goals of the Reserve. If this condition is not met, this land (Nuno & St John, ). We tested a relatively recently must also be expropriated (MMA, ). According to developed method of indirect questioning for eliciting sen- the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation sitive information (the randomized response technique), as (ICMBio), which manages all federal protected areas, expro- a means of obtaining an estimate of the prevalence of illegal priation of private properties within the boundaries of Serra hunting of species of concern (Solomon et al., ; St. John das Lontras National Park has not yet been initiated. In the et al., ; Razafimanahaka et al., ). This was the longer established Una Biological Reserve, % of properties first use of this technique in Brazil in the context of wildlife have been expropriated, but no expropriations have conservation, and we explore its suitability for use in this occurred in the Wildlife Refuge. context. A number of studies have explored the prevalence of, and motivations for, hunting by rural people; for example, Nuno Methods et al. () used an indirect questioning method to explore bushmeat hunting in the Serengeti, Tanzania, as did Target species Harrison et al. () in the Bwindi area in Uganda. We focused on mammal species that occur in southern Adding to this literature, our study was the first integrated Bahia, especially the threatened species listed in the assessment of the factors affecting hunting of threatened National Action Plan for the Conservation of Central mammals in the Bahia region. We explored the relationship Atlantic Forest Mammals as well as mammals that are com- between socio-economic factors and hunting prevalence to monly hunted by local communities in the Atlantic Forest understand whether particular sectors of society are more or region (Table ). less dependent on hunting. This type of information not only supports the implementation of Brazil’s National Action Plan (ICMBio, ) but also adds new insights