Shifting the Paradigms for Sustainable Wildmeat Use in Tropical and Sub-Tropical Regions

In Tropical and sub-tropical Range States, wildmeat is an important source of nutrition and income, but current extraction levels of vulnerable taxa are considered unsustainable. As such, wildmeat use is often seen as problematic for wildlife conservation. From a development perspective, balancing the nutritional needs of people who depend on wildmeat with biodiversity conservation is the greatest challenge. But why can’t wildmeat use be seen as an ally for conservation? Most analysis of wildmeat use have framed the problem around a rather simplistic paradigm where wildmeat use is unsustainable and should therefore be reduced or stopped to ensure wildlife conservation. Indeed, until the early start of this century most research efforts have been rooted in the biological disciplines, focused on quantifying the magnitude of the trade and measuring its level of destruction on wildlife species and ecosystems. This most often led to the institution of prohibitive policies intended for the protection of the wild resources, such as separating people from wildlife, expanding tightly-managed protected area networks, blanket criminalization of wild meat hunting, and increasing enforcement and interdiction measures. More recently, based on the elucidation of the role of wild meat in human livelihoods, some practitioners defend the idea that consumptive uses of wildlife are the only way to save it in the long run.