Bushmeat hunting and extinction risk to the world's mammals

Ripple, William J., Abernethy, Katharine, Betts, Matthew G., Chapron, Guillaume, Dirzo, Rodolfo, Galetti, Mauro, Levi, Taal, Lindsey, Peter A., Macdonald, David W., Machovina, Brian, Newsome, Thomas M., Peres, Carlos A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1588-8765, Wallach, Arian D., Wolf, Christopher and Young, Hillary (2016) Bushmeat hunting and extinction risk to the world's mammals. Royal Society Open Science, 3.

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Abstract

Terrestrial mammals are experiencing a massive collapse in their population sizes and geographical ranges around the world, but many of the drivers, patterns and consequences of this decline remain poorly understood. Here we provide an analysis showing that bushmeat hunting for mostly food and medicinal products is driving a global crisis whereby 301 terrestrial mammal species are threatened with extinction. Nearly all of these threatened species occur in developing countries where major coexisting threats include deforestation, agricultural expansion, human encroachment and competition with livestock. The unrelenting decline of mammals suggests many vital ecological and socio-economic services that these species provide will be lost, potentially changing ecosystems irrevocably. We discuss options and current obstacles to achieving effective conservation, alongside consequences of failure to stem such anthropogenic mammalian extirpation. We propose a multi-pronged conservation strategy to help save threatened mammals from immediate extinction and avoid a collapse of food security for hundreds of millions of people.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	wild meat,bushmeat,hunting,mammals,extinction,sdg 2 - zero hunger,sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/zero_hunger
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Environmental Biology Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Resources, Sustainability and Governance (former - to 2018)
Related URLs:	http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/l...
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	04 Nov 2016 12:00
Last Modified:	20 Mar 2023 14:41
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/61245
DOI:	10.1098/rsos.160498

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