Cascading consequences of hunting and fishing for ecosystem services in Amazonian forests

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2019

End date

12/31/2025

Budget

2,430,972 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Hunting and fishing is the basis of life for indigenous peoples and other local people in the Amazon. In recent times, uncontrolled hunting and fishing has led to a sharp decline in populations of wildlife and fish in many places across this region. Solutions to hunting and fisheries management are therefore essential to enable the preservation of fundamental ecosystem services, such as food security and biodiversity. In addition, understanding impacts of hunting and fishing on tropical forest carbon stocks is important for the global climate and appropriate implementation and monitoring of REDD+ programs. This project investigates the extent to which harvest of large-bodied terrestrial and aquatic species that feed on forest fruits is a driver of carbon stock change in undisturbed Amazonian forests. The project investigates the implications of the disappearance of such animals to carbon stocks in undisturbed Amazonian forests. We are also quantifying the effects of fisheries management undertaken by local communities. To achieve this, we will take advantage of two unique and existing natural experiments: 1) a 50-year old Amazonian-wide network of tree plots that predate modern human disturbances and 2) an existing fish management arrangement on the Juruá river floodplain, where a large number of oxbow lakes are managed under three different levels of protection. Re-sampling trees and saplings from a select set of 102 forest plots across the Brazilian Amazon will allow us to examine changes in forest composition and carbon stocks over five decades. By examining the distribution and abundance of commercially valuable fish species across lakes with different levels of protection, we will be able to test the effectiveness of the local fisheries management. So far, we have sampled 32 forest plots, mapping, measuring and identifying almost 20.000 trees from at least 281 genera in 68 families. In addition, we are doing extensive surveys of other taxa and have detected 31 large vertebrate species - including some of the most elusive Amazonian mammals, such as the short-eared dog and jaguarundi. We also appear to have at least 5 species new to science in our dung beetle samples. We have also sampled DNA from carrion flies and water to assess the direct impact of hunting and fishing on the terrestrial and aquatic fauna, respectively. The latter work has included extensive genotyping of the fish fauna from the Juruá river floodplain so that we can detect changes in fish community structure across lakes via DNA in water samples.