Empty forest or empty rivers? A century of commercial hunting in Amazonia

Antunes, André P., Fewster, Rachel M., Venticinque, Eduardo M., Peres, Carlos ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1588-8765, Levi, Taal, Rohe, Fabio and Shepard Jr, Glenn H. (2016) Empty forest or empty rivers? A century of commercial hunting in Amazonia. Science Advances, 2 (10). ISSN 2375-2548

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Abstract

The Amazon basin is the largest and most species-rich tropical forest and river system in the world, playing a pivotal role in global climate regulation and harboring hundreds of traditional and indigenous cultures. It is a matter of intense debate whether the ecosystem is threatened by hunting practices, whereby an “empty forest” loses critical ecological functions. Strikingly, no previous study has examined Amazonian ecosystem resilience through the perspective of the massive 20th century international trade in furs and skins. We present the first historical account of the scale and impacts of this trade and show that whereas aquatic species suffered basin-wide population collapse, terrestrial species did not. We link this differential resilience to the persistence of adequate spatial refuges for terrestrial species, enabling populations to be sustained through source-sink dynamics, contrasting with unremitting hunting pressure on more accessible aquatic habitats. Our findings attest the high vulnerability of aquatic fauna to unregulated hunting, particularly during years of severe drought. We propose that the relative resilience of terrestrial species suggests a marked opportunity for managing, rather than criminalizing, contemporary traditional subsistence hunting in Amazonia, through both the engagement of local people in community-based comanagement programs and science-led conservation governance.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright © 2016, The Authors This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	amazonian historical ecology,empty forest,commercial and subsistence hunting,hide and skin trade,refuges,hunting sustainability,wildfire conservation,neotropical wildfire,wildfire resilience,source-sink dynamics,sdg 15 - life on land ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/life_on_land
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)
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	31 Oct 2016 10:00
Last Modified:	20 Mar 2023 14:41
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/61165
DOI:	10.1126/sciadv.1600936

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