Exposing illegal hunting and wildlife depletion in the world's largest tropical country through social media data

Globally, illegal sport hunting can threaten prey populations when unregulated. Due to its covert nature, illegal sport hunting poses challenges for data collection, hindering efforts to understand the full extent of its impacts. We gathered social media data to analyze patterns of illegal sport hunting and wildlife depletion across Brazil. We collected data for 2 years (2018-2020) across 5 Facebook groups containing posts depicting pictures of illegal sport hunting events of native fauna. We described and mapped these hunting events by detailing the number of hunters involved, the number of species, the mean body mass of individuals, and the number and biomass of individuals hunted per unit area, stratified by Brazilian biome. We also examined the effects of defaunation on hunting yield and composition via regression models, rank-abundance curves, and spatial interpolation. We detected 2046 illegal sport hunting posts portraying the hunting of 4658 animals (∼29 t of undressed meat) across all 27 states and 6 natural biomes of Brazil. Of 157 native species targeted by hunters, 19 are currently threatened with extinction. We estimated that 1414 hunters extracted 3251 kg/million km<sup>2</sup>. Some areas exhibited more pronounced wildlife depletion, in particular the Atlantic Forest and Caatinga biomes. In these areas, there was a shift from large mammals and reptiles to small birds as the main targeted taxa, and biomass extracted per hunting event and mean body mass across all taxonomic groups were lower than in other areas. Our results highlight that illegal sport hunting adds to the pressures of subsistence hunting and the wild meat trade on Brazil's wildlife populations. Enhanced surveillance efforts are needed to reduce illegal sport hunting levels and to develop well-managed sustainable sport hunting programs. These can support wildlife conservation and offer incentives for local communities to oversee designated sport hunting areas.

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Publication Details

Journal
Conservation Biology
Published
2024-09-09
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14334
Citations
14
Primary Topic
Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
6.42

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article

Exposing illegal hunting and wildlife depletion in the world's largest tropical country through social media data

Marcélia Basto da Silva, Marcela Álvares Oliveira, Thaís Q. Morcatty, Daniel Zani La Laina et al.
14 citations
Conservation Biology
Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
6.42
article

Exposing illegal hunting and wildlife depletion in the world's largest tropical country through social media data

Marcélia Basto da Silva, Marcela Álvares Oliveira, Thaís Q. Morcatty, Daniel Zani La Laina, Zilca Campos, Arnaud Léonard Jean Desbiez, Lauren Coad, Sarah Mângia, João Vitor Campos‐Silva, José Maurício Barbanti Duarte, Simon Knoop, Juliano A. Bogoni, Daniel J. Ingram, Rafael Sá Leitão Barboza, Hani R. El Bizri, Gabriel Fávero Massocato, Aline Pessutti Rampini, Julia E. Fa
article en
14 citations

Abstract

Globally, illegal sport hunting can threaten prey populations when unregulated. Due to its covert nature, illegal sport hunting poses challenges for data collection, hindering efforts to understand the full extent of its impacts. We gathered social media data to analyze patterns of illegal sport hunting and wildlife depletion across Brazil. We collected data for 2 years (2018-2020) across 5 Facebook groups containing posts depicting pictures of illegal sport hunting events of native fauna. We described and mapped these hunting events by detailing the number of hunters involved, the number of species, the mean body mass of individuals, and the number and biomass of individuals hunted per unit area, stratified by Brazilian biome. We also examined the effects of defaunation on hunting yield and composition via regression models, rank-abundance curves, and spatial interpolation. We detected 2046 illegal sport hunting posts portraying the hunting of 4658 animals (∼29 t of undressed meat) across all 27 states and 6 natural biomes of Brazil. Of 157 native species targeted by hunters, 19 are currently threatened with extinction. We estimated that 1414 hunters extracted 3251 kg/million km<sup>2</sup>. Some areas exhibited more pronounced wildlife depletion, in particular the Atlantic Forest and Caatinga biomes. In these areas, there was a shift from large mammals and reptiles to small birds as the main targeted taxa, and biomass extracted per hunting event and mean body mass across all taxonomic groups were lower than in other areas. Our results highlight that illegal sport hunting adds to the pressures of subsistence hunting and the wild meat trade on Brazil's wildlife populations. Enhanced surveillance efforts are needed to reduce illegal sport hunting levels and to develop well-managed sustainable sport hunting programs. These can support wildlife conservation and offer incentives for local communities to oversee designated sport hunting areas.

Conservation BiologyVol. 38(5)
Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (GB), Manchester Metropolitan University (GB), Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (BR), Universidade Federal de Rondônia (BR), Oxford Brookes University (GB), Universidade de São Paulo (BR), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (BR), Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (BR), University of Kent (GB), Universidade do Estado de Mato Grosso (BR), Universidade Federal do Piauí (BR), University of Oxford (GB), Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (BR), Instituto Maria e Joao Aleixo (BR), Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá (BR), Instituto de Conservação de Animais Silvestres (BR), University College London (GB), University of Salford (GB), Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco (BR), Universidade Federal de Alagoas (BR), Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) (BR), Center for International Forestry Research (ID)
United States Agency for International Development, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, UK Research and Innovation, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
Life in Land
Openalex Percentile: Top 3%
Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
6.42
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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