Overhunting results in wide-spread declines in tropical mammal & bird populations

Overhunting results in wide-spread declines in tropical mammal & bird populations. Tropical mammal and bird populations dramatically decline in overhunted areas - new research reveals. The major study published in the renowned journal Science, reveals hunting accounts for a 83 percent decline in mammal populations and a 58 percent decline in bird populations in the tropical regions of Central and South America, Africa and Asia. Led by the Radboud University in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, scientists from the University of Sussex, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the universities of Wageningen and Utrecht, analysed the findings of nearly 200 (176) local studies. They can reveal that hunting causes the abundance of tropical birds and mammals to significantly decline within 7 and 40 km of hunters' access points respectively, such as roads and settlements. Crucially, the team has also discovered that commercial hunting has a higher impact than subsistence hunting and that hunting pressure is higher in areas with better accessibility to major towns, where wild meat can be traded. They also found that declines in larger species are particularly extensive in close proximity to human settlements.