Hunting and plant community dynamics

        Although the direct impacts of defaunation driven by overhunting can be predicted to some degree, higher-order indirect effects on community structure remain poorly understood since Redford’s (1992) seminal paper and may have profound, long-term consequences for the persistence of other taxa, and the...

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Tropical forest disturbance

                Timber extraction in tropical forests is widely variable in terms of species selectivity, but even highly selective logging can trigger major ecological changes in the understory light environment, forest microclimate, and dynamics of plant regeneration....

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Cascading effects of overexploitation on ecosystems

                        All extractive systems in which the over harvested resource is one or more biological populations, can lead to pervasive trophic cascades and other unintended ecosystem-level consequences to non-target species. Most hunting, fishing,...

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Overexploitation in aquatic ecosystems

              Marine biodiversity loss, largely through overfishing, is increasingly impairing the capacity of the world’s oceans to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations (Worm et al. 2006). Yet marine fisheries provide employment and income for 0.2...

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Non-timber forest products

              Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are biological resources other than timber which are extracted from either natural or managed forests (Peters 1994). Examples of exploited plant products include fruits, nuts, oil seeds, latex, resins, gums, medicinal plants, spices,...

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Tropical forest vertebrates

             Humans have been hunting wildlife in tropical forests for over 100 000 years, but the extent of consumption has greatly increased over the last few decades. Tropical forest species are hunted for local consumption or sales in distant markets as food, trophies, medicines and...

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Overexploitation in tropical forests

             Tropical deforestation is driven primarily by frontier expansion of subsistence agriculture and large development programs involving resettlement, agriculture, and infrastructure. However, animal and plant population declines are typically pre-empted by hunting and logging...

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