Title
Indicators for wild animal offtake: methods and case study for African
mammals and birds
Author(s)
Ingram, D.J.;Coad, L.;Collen, B.;Kümpel, N.F.;Breuer, T.;Fa, J.E.;Gill, D.J.C.;Maisels, F.;Schleicher, J.;Stokes, E.J.;Taylor, G.;Scharlemann, J.P.W.
Published
2015
Publisher
Ecology and Society
Abstract
Unsustainable exploitation of wild animals is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and to millions of people
depending on wild meat for food and income. The international conservation and development community has committed to
implementing plans for sustainable use of natural resources and has requested development of monitoring systems of bushmeat offtake
and trade. Although offtake monitoring systems and indicators for marine species are more developed, information on harvesting
terrestrial species is limited. Building on approaches developed to monitor exploitation of fisheries and population trends, we have
proposed two novel indicators for harvested terrestrial species: the mean body mass indicator (MBMI) assessing whether hunters are
relying increasingly on smaller species over time, as a measure of defaunation, by tracking body mass composition of harvested species
within samples across various sites and dates; and the offtake pressure indicator (OPI) as a measure of harvesting pressure on groups
of wild animals within a region by combining multiple time series of the number of harvested individuals across species. We applied
these two indicators to recently compiled data for West and Central African mammals and birds. Our exploratory analyses show that
the MBMI of harvested mammals decreased but that of birds rose between 1966/1975 and 2010. For both mammals and birds the
OPI increased substantially during the observed time period. Given our results, time-series data and information collated from multiple
sources are useful to investigate trends in body mass of hunted species and offtake volumes. In the absence of comprehensive monitoring
systems, we suggest that the two indicators developed in our study are adequate proxies of wildlife offtake, which together with
additional data can inform conservation policies and actions at regional and global scales.
Keywords
Africa;bushmeat;exploitation;harvest;indicator
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