Archive for: Wildlife

Integrating Human and Animal Health for Conservation and Development: Findings From a Program Evaluation in Southwest Uganda

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This report documents the process through which a Ugandan conservation organization, Conservation through Public Health (CTPH), successfully integrated interventions traditionally seen as from different “domains” or “sectors” for the dual purposes of (1) reducing threats to mountain gorillas and their habitat and (2) improving the well-being of local communities directly dependent upon the health of the former (for ecotourism and natural resource use). CTPH received guidance from JSI in integrating family planning (FP) services to a quality standard, and increasing awareness of and demand for services among rural communities. This report describes activities undertaken between Oct 2006 and December 2008 and key results. It ends with an assessment of the potential for replication to increase coverage around this important Ugandan and World Heritage conservation area. Also presented are some lessons learned applicable to other initiatives aimed at extending access to FP around remote, biodiversity-priority areas and conserving the world’s biological richness.

Year: 2010

Source: John Snow, Inc. | Conservation Through Public Health | Evaluation and Research Technologies for Health

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    Conservation

    Economic Development

    Family Planning

    Integration

    Population

    Wildlife

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    Bushmeat Hunting and Extinction Risk to the World’s Mammals

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    Terrestrial mammals are experiencing a massive collapse in their population sizes and geographical ranges around the world, but many of the drivers, patterns and consequences of this decline remain poorly understood. Here we provide an analysis showing that bushmeat hunting for mostly food and medicinal products is driving a global crisis whereby 301 terrestrial mammal species are threatened with extinction. Nearly all of these threatened species occur in developing countries where major coexisting threats include deforestation, agricultural expansion, human encroachment and competition with livestock. The unrelenting decline of mammals suggests many vital ecological and socio-economic services that these species provide will be lost, potentially changing ecosystems irrevocably. We discuss options and current obstacles to achieving effective conservation, alongside consequences of failure to stem such anthropogenic mammalian extirpation. We propose a multi-pronged conservation strategy to help save threatened mammals from immediate extinction and avoid a collapse of food security for hundreds of millions of people.

    Year: 2016

    Source: Royal Society Open Science

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      Conservation

      Wildlife

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      Benefits of Wildlife Consumption to Child Nutrition in a Biodiversity Hotspot

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      Terrestrial wildlife is the primary source of meat for hundreds of millions of people throughout the developing world. Despite widespread human reliance on wildlife for food, the impact of wildlife depletion on human health remains poorly understood. This paper looks at a cohort of 77 preadolescent children (under 12 years of age) in rural northeastern Madagascar and shows that consuming more wildlife was associated with significantly higher hemoglobin concentrations. The research demonstrates that removing access to wildlife would induce a 29% increase in the numbers of children suffering from anemia and a tripling of anemia cases among children in the poorest households. The well-known progression from anemia to future disease demonstrates the powerful and far-reaching effects of lost wildlife access on a variety of human health outcomes, including cognitive, motor, and physical deficits. The research quantifies costs of reduced access to wildlife for a rural community in Madagascar and illuminates pathways that may broadly link reduced natural resource access to declines in childhood health.

      Year: 2011

      Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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        Maternal and Child Health

        Nutrition

        Wildlife

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