My attention was drawn to Hunting Wildlife in the Tropics and Subtropics via a group e-mail that contained a brief summary of the book along with a call for reviewers. My maiden surname, Mandisodza, means ‘to hunt’ in Shona, an Indigenous language in Zimbabwe, and so I have long felt a natural curiosity towards anything to do with hunting. After agreeing to review the book, I was fortunate to attend an event featuring one of its authors, Julia Fa, who presented her work as part of a series of talks hosted by the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit in Oxford, UK. Fa spoke about her research, particularly highlighting case studies of hunting in the tropics and subtropics, which further deepened my interest in the subject.
The book examines the hunting of wild vertebrates in tropical and subtropical regions, predominantly for their meat, with a particular focus on the sustainability of this practice in the 21st century. People have hunted wildlife, including mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, for millennia, not only for their meat as a source of protein, but also to obtain hides for clothing, bones for tools and musical instruments, and other animal-derived products for purposes as diverse as trophies and medicines. Although hunting historically had little impact on wildlife populations, today the increasing pressures from a growing human population, efficient hunting tools and habitat loss threaten many vertebrate species.
The book is structured into eight main chapters. The first two provide an introduction to eating wild meat, evolutionary and historical aspects, and the environmental backdrop of the tropics and subtropics as the focus of the book. This is followed by chapters providing accounts of the different modes of hunting, technologies used, cultural aspects and insights into optimal foraging theory and how this relates to human hunting of wildlife. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on sustainability and overexploitation, respectively. In chapter 7, the authors highlight the topical issue of wild meat and zoonotic diseases. This is an important subject and one that needs to be handled with care because of the close connections between wildlife and the rural and Indigenous peoples whose livelihoods are sustained by the consumption and trade of mammals, amphibians, birds and reptiles. The 8th chapter on closing the gap between knowledge and action is very informative and I think will be useful to policy makers and students in the conservation field.
One of the most important challenges relating to hunting is finding the balance between wildlife conservation and the needs of rural and Indigenous people. These are the people whose lives are shaped by wildlife utilization, and where Indigenous knowledge systems and traditional practices for managing wildlife for subsistence use are still in place, such utilization is usually sustainable. The picture becomes more complex, however, and sustainability more challenging, when people external to local communities harvest wildlife for commercial purposes.
The book is well written and easy to follow, and would be of interest to academics and practitioners alike, as well as serving as a valuable reference book. Overall, the topic of hunting in the tropics and subtropics is covered in adequate depth and breadth. However, there is a need to examine regional aspects of wild meat consumption more closely, and country- or community-specific case studies would provide useful illustrations of the state and future of wild meat harvesting. In addition, I wish the book had covered in greater depth the issue of affluent, mostly urban people who consume wild meat as a sign of wealth and social status. This practice, in contrast to subsistence use by local communities, is a serious threat to wild species as it increases commercial harvesting.
The book helped me understand hunting from an academic point of view. Including more directly the views and voices of rural and Indigenous communities could add further value to the book and would no doubt be of interest to readers. I can certainly recommend the book to my peers in the conservation arena. Hunting Wildlife in the Tropics and Subtropics is a useful reference book that provides valuable insights into this important topic and supports decision-making for conservation management and practice. The fact that it is freely available as an open access book should help it reach a wide audience.
Open access
