Invasive species and bushmeat hunting contributing to wildlife conservation: the case of feral pigs in a Neotropical wetland

Abstract

Abstract An unusual combination of two major conservation threats, invasive species and bushmeat hunting, has had a positive outcome for wildlife conservation in the Brazilian Pantanal. The Pantanal is a wetland and one of the few non-protected areas in the Neotropics where people live but rarely hunt native wildlife. To understand why wildlife hunting is not a major conservation issue in the Pantanal an exploratory survey, semi-structured interviews, skull collection and tooth wear analysis of feral pig Sus scrofa , white-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari and collared peccary Pecari tajacu were conducted, and hunting registers distributed, in the central region of the Pantanal. The results showed that feral pigs are the main hunting target. Feral pigs are effectively acting as a replacement species for hunting of native wildlife because the pigs provide a constant, culturally acceptable, readily available and free source of meat and oil to remote ranches. We cannot evaluate, however, if the buffer from hunting that feral pigs provide to native wildlife outweigh this species’ potential negative ecological impacts.