Hunting Wildlife in the Tropics and Subtropics

Abstract

The first part includes two introductory chapters that outline the topic at hand as well as the environmental background where hunting of wildlife takes place in the tropics and subtropics. The second part collates information on the hunting process itself. We start by reviewing how human hunters hunt and examine the variety of techniques used in the past and present to take animals (Chapter 3). We show this not just as a record of how animals are taken by people but also as a testament to the ingenuity and resourceful ness that human beings have developed to feed themselves. This is followed by two chapters, the first explaining what we know about how hunters go about making decisions on how and what to hunt (Chapter 4), and a second that explores how we define hunting sustainability (Chapter 5). The third part of the book contains three chapters about the threats and drivers affecting wild meat use. A first chapter summarizes our understanding of how wild meat is consumed and hunted but more importantly what we know of the spatial and temporal impact of overexploitation of wildlife (Chapter 6). Here we also define defaunation and the consequences on prey populations and ecosystems. The following chapter deals with the currently topical matter of the variety of diseases in humans that can be or are linked to wild animals, especially when these are butchered and consumed by human beings (Chapter 7).We end the book with our thoughts on how we can bridge the gap between science and action (Chapter 8) and suggest ways of achieving this.