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Wildlife Depletion in a West African Farm-Forest Mosaic and the Implications for Hunting Across the Landscape

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Abstract

Unsustainable hunting is a threat to conservation and rural livelihoods that depend on bushmeat for food and income. To reduce the pressure on forest-dependent vulnerable species, hunting in farmland might complement offtake from forests and provide a sustainable source of bushmeat. To explore this possibility, we investigated patterns of hunting and wildlife depletion, and integration of hunting into agricultural livelihoods, in an intensively managed farm-forest mosaic landscape. Surveys were conducted across 63 households over a year in a Ghanaian cocoa-farming community surrounded by a timber production forest. The findings indicated a high level of wildlife depletion in the landscape and the local extinction of the largest species, especially in farmland. Most hunting occurred in forests and offtake from farmland was low, yet hunting in farmland was disproportionately common relative to its coverage in the landscape. Most farmland hunting was opportunistic and integrated with agricultural activities. Our findings suggest that intensively used farmland provides little opportunity to reduce hunting pressure in forests.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the people of Wansampo for their cooperation and hospitality during the study. This research would not have been possible without the help of the field assistants R. Asare, A. Tawia, D. Amponsah and A. Asieyie. We are grateful to E.J. Milner-Gulland, G. Davies and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft. BSH was supported by a joint studentship of the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and National Environmental Research Council (NERC) with additional support from The Parkes Foundation. Logistical support during the field work was provided by John Bitar & co. Ltd, Logs and Lumber Ltd, the Zoological Society of London and Family Köhler. This paper is a contribution to the ZSL Institute of Zoology Bushmeat Research Programme.

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  1. Charlotte Whitham

    Present address: College of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, 35 Tsinghua-East Road, Beijing, 100083, China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent’s Park, London, NW1 4RY, UK

    Björn Schulte-Herbrüggen, J. Marcus Rowcliffe, Laura A. Kurpiers & Guy Cowlishaw

  2. Department of Anthropology, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Björn Schulte-Herbrüggen & Katherine Homewood

  3. Division of Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Manor House Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK

    Charlotte Whitham

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  1. Björn Schulte-Herbrüggen
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Correspondence to Björn Schulte-Herbrüggen.

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Schulte-Herbrüggen, B., Rowcliffe, J.M., Homewood, K. et al. Wildlife Depletion in a West African Farm-Forest Mosaic and the Implications for Hunting Across the Landscape. Hum Ecol 41, 795–806 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-013-9609-5

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