4 Baka Darwin Initiative project: Wild meat hunting by sedentarised Baka Pygmies

1. Enabling Baka attain food security, improved health and sustain biodiversity Lecture 4: Wild meat hunting by sedentarised Baka Pygmies in southeastern Cameroon Guillermo Ros Brull, Eva Ávila Martin, Stephan M. Funk, Luca Luiselli, Robert Okale and Julia E. Fa(PeerJ, 2020, e9906 )

2. Introduction

3. Why hunting wildlife • Wildlife is hunted in African forest and savanna regions • As • a source of meat and income, • to control agricultural crop pests, • reduce threats to livestock and human safety • as trophies (Coad et al. 2018).

4. Concerns • Concerns that the overexploitation of wildlife across sub-Saharan Africa will • lead to the loss of an important source of dietary protein, micro-nutrients, and income for numerous rural poor (Bennett et al. 2007, Nasi et al. 2011) • imperil the cultural identities of many local and traditional people for which hunting is part of their heritage and sense of self (van Vliet and Mbazza 2011).

5. Hunter-gatherers • hunting of all wildlife species can be sustainable (Bennett et al. 2007) • when hunter-gatherer groups are few and range across large landscapes that they defend as “their” exclusive territory • Hunting can rapidly become unsustainable • as has happened in some groups in central Africa (e.g. Riddell 2013) • if they switch from being wild meat consumers to traders supplying local or distant markets (Inogwabini 2014, van Vliet et al. 2017).

6. Aims • To quantify • the diversity of animals hunted • the techniques used • of Baka communities living non-nomadic lives in south-eastern Cameroon • By • employing community-based reporting schemes

7. The Baka • South-eastern Cameroon • Formerly strict hunters-gatherers • Now: Sedentarised since the 1960ties • as result of “development assistance” programs by the State • voluntary • Mobility • Formerly: high seasonal mobility associated to a specific forest habitat type • Now: shifting between settlement and forest camp-life • Diet • resource gathering and collection • small-scale agriculture • hunting

8. Materials and Methods

9. Study area • 10 Baka villages • Located along the Djoum-Mintom road • south of the Dja Faunal Reserve • bordering the Dja Biosphere Reserve

10. Village characteristics • population censuses conducted by us in all ten villages • 237 dwellings • largely poto-poto houses • but also mungulu huts • 172 (72.57%) were lived in during the study • Vacant dwellings • belonged to families that were in forest at the time of the study

11. Family characteristics • persons living in the occupied dwellings • mean (±SD): 4.33 ± 2.77 • range 1 - 17 • village population sizes • mean (±SD): 73.6 ± 30.3 • range: 25 - 111

12. Habitat • Mixture of evergreen and semi-deciduous forests (Letouzey 1985) • Forest is degraded alongside the dirt roads and main road • Logging operations in the region started in the 1970s • Logging roads connect villages to market areas

13. Data collection 1 • We followed the guidelines of the Social Research Association (2003) • Authorisation by the Ministere de L’AdministrationTerritoriale et de La Decentralisation • Principle of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) • Several meetings with each village • participants highlighted the main challenges faced in their daily lives • identified key problems around agriculture and hunting

14. Data collection 2 • We recruited hunters to self-report their daily hunting activities • over a period of 5 months • voluntary • anonymous & confidential • adult • informed that we were not focusing on poaching but to understand hunting as a subsistence activity

15. Data collection 3 • Coordinated by village reporters • paid • school teacher • communication using Fang, the lingua franca • visited participants daily • recorded data • The field team coordinated village reporters by weekly visits

16. Analysis • Statistical analyses conducted using • R statistical environment • for skewedness of data • for generalised linear model, GLM • Past 3.0 • for diversity analyses • all tests being two-tailed • alpha level was set at P = 0.05

17. Results

18. Sampling effort • 68 hunting trips with no information on hunting returns • 1,946 hunting trips with information on hunting returns for 5 months • by 121 hunters (118 men, 3 women) • sampled 77% (n=133) of hunters • assuming at least one hunter per occupied house

19. Hunting effort • duration of hunting trips • range: 1 – 180 hours • highly skewed • mean of 13.17 hours • median of 8 hours • most hunters engage in relatively short hunting events as in As in other hunting studies of Baka communities in southern Cameroon

20. Returns 1 • Carcasses returned across trips • mean ±SD: 1.15 ±1.11 • median: 1, range: 0-9 • correlated with effort (time) • Spearman’s r= 0.33, P < 0.0001, N=1,946 • large variance: only 10.8% of the variance explained • Across hunters • Spearman’s r = 0.82, P < 0.0001, N = 121 • explains 67.3% of variance

21. Returns 2 • Trips without returned carcasses 23.4% • negatively correlated with hunting effort • GLM coefficient = -0.015 ±0.005, P < 0.0001 • negatively correlated with the hunter´s total return of carcasses • GLM coefficient = -0.030, ±0.005, p P < 0.0001 • positively correlated with the total hunting effort • GLM coefficient = 0.003 ±0.0005, P < 0.0001

22. Species composition • 2,245 carcasses in total • 97% identified on species level • 49 separate species • Mammals = 37 • Birds = 6 • Reptiles = 6 • By village, mammals contributed between 80% and 100% of all carcasses • More reptiles were hunted than birds • Bias towards mammals similar to other Pygmy hunters throughout the Congo Basin

23. Birds • no songbirds were hunted • large birds were hunted • hornbills • guinea fowls • fracolins

24. Mammals 1 • Ungulates • nine bovids, mainly duikers • one pig species • one Tragulid species

25. Mammals 2 • 13 carnivore species were hunted • 1 cat • 7 Herpestidae • 1 of each Mustelidae, Nandiniidae and Procaviidae • 2 pangolins

26. Mammals 3 • Amongst the primates • eight monkeys • one ape • one prosimian • one unidentified primate

27. Mammals 4 • Only three rodents and one unidentified squirrel were recorded • rodents contributed the 2nd highest proportion of mammalian returns • with two exceptions where ungulates and rodents were equal

28. Mammals 5 • Ungulates contributed the highest proportion of mammalian returns • χ2 test on the data frequencies, P < 0.001 • More ungulates were hunted than rodents • ungulate: rodent ratio: 2.2 ±1.4 • More rodents, on average, tha carnivora, hyracoidea, pholidota and primates combined

29. Reptiles • Amongst reptiles • one crocodile species • two Elapidae snakes • two Viperidae snakes (one unidentified) • one monitor • two tortoises (one unidentified)

30. Animal orders versus hunting methods • Correlation between mammal orders, birds and reptiles and hunting methods (rifle, traps, dogs and others) • significant (Spearman´s rank correlation) in only two cases • primates for rifle hunting r = +0.65, P=0.049 • primates for snare hunting r=-0.73, P=0.02

31. Species richness & diversity indices 1 • community characteristics of hunted animals were similar among villages • Why? • most hunters are using similar habitats, close to their villages • practicing similar hunting techniques • exception: Meyos • lowest dominance • highest Shannon, Margalef and Chao-1

32. Species richness & diversity indices 2 • The diversity profile for hunted animals per community also shows the curve for Meyos highest • 9999 bootstraps for 95 % confidence • P < 0.01 at ANCOVA • Why? • possibly: hunting territories are less depleted and therefore more diverse than in the other villages

33. Species richness & diversity indices 3 • Chao 1 • number of species predicted to be present at each study area given the sample observed • significantly higher than expected (i.e. Taxa_S) for 7 of the 10 villages • hunters do not take all possible species

34. Biomass extracted 1 • 20,609 kg across the 10 villages • 46 species with weight estimates (species averages) • average return per hunter • range 52.3 kg and 389.1 kg • mean ±SD = 183.7 ±115.6 kg • skew not significant with T = 0.369, P = 0.48 • just over half of the animal biomass extracted by all hunters was provided by 4 mammal species: • blue duiker (17.99%) • brush-tailed porcupine (15.10%) • bay duiker is (10.07%) • Emin’s pouched rat (7.93%). • Data • 53 carcass types, i.e. distinct identified or unidentified species • 44 could be determined to the species level • 2 to the genus level • 2 to family level • 5 unspecified

35. Biomass extracted 2 • Estimated mean ±SD extraction rates per annum • per hunter • 440.8 ±277.4 kg H-1 yr-1 • per village • 7,569.7 ± 6,103.4 kg yr-1 • Mean body mass of animals hunted in all villages • 10.1 ± 4.0 kg

36. Hunting methods • Large village differences • Akonetyé 99.4% snared • Odoumou 50.9% shot • efficiency of the different hunting methods • snaring most efficient: 15.2 ± 27.8 animals/hr • dogs: 0.2 ± 0.4 animals/hr • hunting with guns: 0.1 ± 0.2 animals/hr • Snares: 65.8% ±16.6 • Shotguns: 22.6% ± 17.7 • Others: 8.7% ± 7.0 • collection (for tortoises in particular) • dogs

37. Destination of carcasses • Destination • Own consumption 48.1% ±17.6 • Sold 32.7% ±12.6 • Partially 19.2% ±17.0 • Sold to • neighbours 41.9% • resellers 31.3% • passers-by 26.8% • Large differences between villages

38. Threatened and legal status of hunted species • IUCN Red List categories (top) • “least concern” 60-80% • “endangered” 1% • only endangered species was the chimpanzee • Cameroonian legal status (Bottom) • mainly classes B and C • class A: 0-17%

39. Conclusions

40. Sampling bias unlikely • Duda (2017) stresses that the establishment of trust with informants is essential to reduce reporting bias. • How we counteracted the sampling bias • some of us lived in the region and speak the local language • local village reporters • ZyL has been working with our the study studied villages providing health service for over a decade • In our briefings we emphasised that hunting should be carried out as normal and reassured that there would be no reporting to the authorities • Thus, we are confident that underreporting of species prohibited by law was likely to be low if it occurred at all

41. Biomass extracted • estimated extraction: • ~70,000 kg per annum by all hunters across the ten study villages • range range 2,000 – 19,000 kg • cattle equivalents • 113 cattle • weight of dairy cattle 617 kg (Schubert et al. 2019)

42. Amount of animal protein • For people it´s a significant amount of protein • fundamental for a people where meat from livestock rearing is absent. • hunting is a long-established part of their lives, of immense cultural value (Bahuchet, 1992; Köhler, 2005; Ichikawa et al., 2016 ; Duda et al., 2018) or even, as some authors suggest, “a religion” (Pemunta 2019). • Absolute amount low • game harvested per inhabitant per year Fa et al. (2016) • non-Pygmy groups 233 kg • Pygmy groups 212 kg • median amount of game meat extracted per Baka inhabitant per year 83 kg

43. Selling • Opportunistic sale of wild meat by Baka families is a common practice, providing much of the monetary value of products sold • also observed elsewhere for Baka (Duda et al., 2018) • this includes Class C animals under the Cameroonian law • Class C animals exclusively for personal consumption and may not be sold • this restriction works against indigenous groups fulfilling their family needs • although sale of wild meat is tolerated, the existing legal frameworks stigmatise hunters as criminals • if the low were to be strictly applied, it would seriously affect the livelihood of the forest hunters who heavily depend on wildlife

44. Sustainable? • Several lines of evidence indicate sustainability • Lower absolute amount hunted per year (83kg) as elsewhere for Pygmy (212 kg) and non-Pygmy (233 kg) groups • most of the biomass extracted originated from highly hunting-resilient species • blue duiker • brush-tailed porcupine • bay duiker • Emin’s rat • mean body mass of prey comparatively high (average 10kg with three villages above 15kg) • most hunted species were either of “Least Concern” in the IUCN Red List and belonged to Class C in the Cameroonian law

45. Implications for animal hunting • Adequate management of game species must be sought by allowing rural communities to be able to continue to obtain natural resources in the same manner they are currently doing • but reinforcing these actions by a better understanding of traditional hunting regulations and sustainable management

46. Implications for Baka • Pygmies • are still marginalised (Ohenjo et al. 2006, Wodon et al. 2012) • have witnessed the gradual reduction of access to forest resources • Need to have their • hunting rights protected (e.g. expansion of the DFR) • selling rights granted as long as amounts remain low and sustainable

47. Next: Hunting territories and land use overlap in sedentarised Baka Pygmy communities in southeastern Cameroon

48. On behalf of • the Baka • the Project team THANK YOU MERÇI BIEN Photo: Darwin Initiative Project