Doctoral Dissertation Research: The effects of forest habitat modification on hunting and prey abundance

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).The world’s rainforest ecosystems are hotspots of global biodiversity and have extensive histories of occupation by Indigenous peoples as locations for customary agriculture and subsistence foraging and hunting. With these reservoirs of biodiversity now showing signs of decline, we require a better understanding of how human-influenced forests can both support Indigenous livelihoods and sustain diverse floral and faunal communities. While human use and modification of rainforests has historically been thought of as a potential driver of species loss, recent research suggests that forest mosaics created by human activities harbor a substantial degree of habitat diversity and novel foraging opportunities that may benefit animal and plant communities. The purpose of this doctoral dissertation project is to study the relationship between customary agricultural practices and subsistence hunting to understand how these practices impact local faunal and floral diversity in a neotropical rainforest. In addition to training a doctoral student in anthropological science, the research helps local stakeholders manage natural resources and generalize these insights so they can be used to develop management designs that incorporate local practices to prevent wildlife loss. The central research question of this dissertation project is whether the human-influenced forests that are created by customary agriculture can support populations of wild game and enable sustainable harvests of wild game by subsistence hunters. The researchers test whether and how human disturbance precludes or facilitates resource conservation. Integrating theory and methods from human behavioral ecology, wildlife management, and community ecology, this research documents hunter movements and harvest returns and links them to patterns of wildlife abundance along a disturbance gradient created by customary agricultural practices. The researchers use semi-structured interviews and participant observation to ethnographically contextualize the social and ecological dimensions of customary agriculture and subsistence hunting. By studying how humans and wildlife select and use habitat in a mosaic of cultivated, secondary, and climax forest, this study contributes theoretical insights about the mechanisms for sustainable harvest of wild game species and the coexistence of ecological communities with human communities. Rather than study hunting and farming as distinct forms of human-environment relations, this study conceptualizes these practices as key parts of an integrated socioecological system.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.