Household reliance on illegal hunting

Illegal bushmeat provides a critical source of dietary protein for many people (Damania et al. 2014) with ca. 98,000 wildebeest hunted annually (Rentsch & Packer 2014). Offtake levels are often in excess of 10% of the population and are biologically unsustainable. A comprehensive overview of the general trends of this provisioning service is missing, in particular how rainfall, soil fertility, distance to protected area, law enforcement intensity and land use strategy (agriculture vs. pastoralism) determine whether people partake in illegal hunting or opt for other livelihoods. NTNU, SUA, UDSM and TAWIRI will combine existing data on illegal hunting and agriculture from the different conservation authorities in the Greater Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem (see WP1) into a single dataset, which will be analysed in a GIS framework to develop a statistical predictive framework of illegal hunting incidents. Given that time spent hunting detracts from the time available for farming, NTNU SUA, UDSM and TAWIRI will investigate the scenarios under which people switch between these two alternate livelihoods in different regions of the ecosystem. This will be combined with the result of household surveys in which indicators for the contribution of illegal hunting to food provisioning and income are estimated. Results will highlight illegal hunting hotspots and can be used to develop alternative sustainable food security and income strategies.