Geographic Distribution of Hunters in Relation to Ecological, Economic, and Social Factors

这份授予犹他大学的奖金将允许研究者在扎伊尔的伊图里热带森林进行人种学和生态学研究。该项目将研究俾格米狩猎采集者，以确定哪些文化和生态因素促进了两种独特的群体狩猎策略——弓和网狩猎的建立和延续。该项目将研究这两种猎人的地理分布与森林组成和森林园艺的位置和强度的关系。将在不同类型的森林环境中比较弓和网狩猎的相对效率。该项目将获得实地数据，这些数据将与来自遥感（陆地卫星）来源的数据结合起来，以准确地测量猎人所处的生态状况。重点将是理解为什么网狩猎取代了弓狩猎在一些但不是所有的俾格米人群体，并了解每一种类型的狩猎如何适应环境。这项研究很重要，因为狩猎群体对森林环境有着独特的深入了解。通过研究它们利用各种森林环境的变化，利用遥感来源提供的精确和丰富的数据，该项目将增进我们对热带狩猎和热带森林的了解。从长远来看，增加对热带森林功能的了解将有助于我们保护它。

This award to the University of Utah will allow the investigator to do ethnographic and ecological research in the Ituri tropical forest of Zaire. The project will study pygmy hunter-gatherers to determine what cultural and ecological factors have promoted the establishment and perpetuation of two unique group-hunting strategies--bow and net hunting. The project will study the geographic distribution of the two types of hunters in relation to forest composition and the location and intensity of forest horticulture. The relative efficiency of bow and net hunting will be compared in various types of forest settings. The project will acquire field data which will be integrated with data from remote sensing (LANDSAT) sources, to accurately measure the ecological situation the hunters operate in. The focus will be to understand why net hunting has replaced bow hunting in some but not all pygmy groups, and to understand how each type of hunting fits into the environment. This research is important because hunting groups have a uniquely intensive knowledge of the forest environment. By studying the variation in their use of the various forest environments, with the precise and copious data available from remote sensing sources, the project will advance our knowledge of tropical hunting and of tropical forests. Increased knowledge of how the tropical forest functions will help us preserve it, in the long run.