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Table of Contents - January 2011 - Volume 45, Issue 01  

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Invasive species and bushmeat hunting contributing to wildlife conservation: the case of feral pigs in a Neotropical wetland

Arnaud Leonard Jean Desbieza1 c1, Alexine Keuroghliana2, Ubiratan Piovezana3 and Richard Ernest Bodmera4

a1 Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Conservation and Research Department, Murrayfield, Edinburgh, EH12 6TS, UK, and Embrapa Pantanal, Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.

a2 Wildlife Conservation Society–Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

a3 Embrapa Pantanal, Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

a4 Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK

Abstract

An unusual combination of two major conservation threats, invasive species and bushmeat hunting, has had a positive outcome for wildlife conservation in the Brazilian Pantanal. The Pantanal is a wetland and one of the few non-protected areas in the Neotropics where people live but rarely hunt native wildlife. To understand why wildlife hunting is not a major conservation issue in the Pantanal an exploratory survey, semi-structured interviews, skull collection and tooth wear analysis of feral pig Sus scrofa, white-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari and collared peccary Pecari tajacu were conducted, and hunting registers distributed, in the central region of the Pantanal. The results showed that feral pigs are the main hunting target. Feral pigs are effectively acting as a replacement species for hunting of native wildlife because the pigs provide a constant, culturally acceptable, readily available and free source of meat and oil to remote ranches. We cannot evaluate, however, if the buffer from hunting that feral pigs provide to native wildlife outweigh this species’ potential negative ecological impacts.

(Received September 03 2009)

(Reviewed November 06 2009)

(Accepted January 07 2010)

(Online publication February 01 2011)

Keywords

Correspondence:

c1 Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Conservation and Research Department, Murrayfield, Edinburgh, EH12 6TS, UK, and Embrapa Pantanal, Corumbá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. E-mail adesbiez@rzss.org.uk

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