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

[03:1935 . brashares]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3至24个月的研究。该计划的奖励为联合研究提供了机会，并利用独特或互补的设施、专业知识和国外的实验条件。该奖项将支持Justin S. Brashares博士与剑桥大学保护生物学组（CBG）的Andrew Balmford博士以及加纳野生动物部的Moses Sam先生合作开展为期24个月的研究。发展中国家大规模过度捕猎野生动物以获取肉类，导致数百种大型哺乳动物在当地灭绝。确定这种丛林肉收获的可持续性和长期影响，以及丛林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，并调查生物地理、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。这项工作利用了加纳长达31年的野生动物监测项目，将提供亟需的信息，包括41种哺乳动物数量的下降速度、野生动物数量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数量下降之间的关系，以及当地物种灭绝自上而下和自下而上的影响。这项研究的结果将为野生动物种群和社区的野生动物狩猎的影响建立现实的模型。然后，这些模型将被应用于在非洲许多地区设计和实施保护和监测战略，在这些地区，森林肉收获的影响和规模仍然没有得到充分的记录。

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.