Illegal hunting a greater threat to wildlife than forest degradation

[Judi Lynn]

by Nanditha Chandraprakash on 9 December 2019

The world has long associated plummeting populations of Southeast Asian wildlife with news of forest degradation and poignant images of deforested lands. Recent studies, however, bring to light another human practice that’s been driving the decline of wildlife numbers in these ecosystems.

Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in Berlin, in cooperation with WWF-Vietnam, WWF-Laos and the forestry department of the state of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, carried out a study showing that illegal hunting may be a bigger threat to mammals and ground-dwelling birds than forest degradation. The research, published Oct. 30 in the journal Communications Biology, compares camera-trapping records from logged forests in Malaysian Borneo with a protected eco-region in the Annamite Mountains of Vietnam and Laos where illegal hunting is rampant. The results show a more precipitous loss of species and wildlife populations in the Annamites than in Borneo.

Researchers chose the two rainforest study sites as they have similar habitats. Their recent history, however, has a few noteworthy differences. While widespread logging has degraded many forests in Borneo, the island has faced less hunting. By contrast, the Annamites have experienced exceedingly high illegal hunting, but its forests are structurally more intact.

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“In one protected area complex, the Hue and Quang Nam Saola Nature Reserves, in central Vietnam, forest rangers collected more than 110,000 wire snares over the course of a few years,” Andrew Tilker, one of the lead authors of the study, a Ph.D. student at Leibniz-IZW and Asian species officer at the NGO Global Wildlife Conservation, said in an email.

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/illegal-hunting-a-greater-threat-to-wildlife-than-forest-degradation/
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