International Research Fellowship Program: Impact of Bushmeat Hunting on Mammal Populations and Communities

0301935布拉夏国际研究奖学金计划使美国科学家和工程师能够在国外进行三到二十四个月的研究。 该计划的奖项提供了联合研究的机会，以及使用国外独特或互补的设施，专业知识和实验条件。 该奖项将支持博士24个月的研究奖学金。Brashares将与剑桥大学保护生物学小组（CBG）的Andrew Balmford博士和加纳野生动物部门的Moses Sam先生合作。在整个发展中国家，为了肉食而对野生动物的大规模过度狩猎正在导致数百种大型哺乳动物的灭绝。 确定这种瘦肉收获的可持续性和长期影响，以及瘦肉在人类粮食安全中的作用，是生物多样性保护的优先事项。 该项目将描述大型哺乳动物种群的长期趋势，并调查地理、生态和社会经济因素对西非加纳野生动物种群和群落下降率的影响。 这项工作利用加纳31年的野生动物监测计划，将提供迫切需要的信息，包括41种哺乳动物物种的下降速度，野生动物下降与保护区和人类住区特征之间的联系，人类蛋白质替代来源的可用性与大型哺乳动物下降之间的关系，以及物种局部灭绝的自上而下和自下而上的影响。研究结果将建立狩猎对野生动物种群和社区影响的现实模型。 这些模型将被用于在非洲许多地区制定和实施保护和监测战略，这些地区的肉食收获的影响和规模仍然缺乏记录。

0301935BrasharesThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Justin S. Brashares to work with Dr. Andrew Balmford at Cambridge University's Conservation Biology Group (CBG) and with Mr. Moses Sam at the Ghana Wildlife Division.Massive over-hunting of wildlife for meat throughout the developing world is causing local extinctions of hundreds of species of large mammals. Identifying the sustainability and long-term effects of this bushmeat harvest, and the role bushmeat plays in human food security are priorities for biodiversity conservation. This project will describe long-term trends in large mammal populations and investigate the influence of biogeographic, ecological and socio-economic factors on rates of population and community decline of wildlife in Ghana, West Africa. The work makes use of Ghana's 31 year wildlife monitoring program and will provide desperately needed information on rates of decline for 41 mammal species, links between wildlife declines and characteristics of reserves and human settlement, relationships between availability of alternate sources of protein for humans and large mammal declines, and top-down and bottom-up effects of local extinction of species. Results of the research will build realistic models of the effects of bushmeat hunting on wildlife populations and communities. These models will then be applied to devise and implement conservation and monitoring strategies in the many areas of Africa where the impact and scale of bushmeat harvests remain poorly documented.