2.1 Classifying patterns of utilization

Latin America's wildlife resources are used in many different ways, reflecting the local, economic, cultural, social and ecological differences of this vast land area and its many varied climates and socio-economic systems, embracing situations as dissimilar as indigenous hunter-gatherer communities and urban consumer societies. It is accordingly somewhat arbitrary to classify pattern of resource utilization, but useful in terms of organizing the available information. From the administrative and legal standpoint, there are five kinds of hunting.

Subsistence hunting: Practiced almost exclusively to round out the protein intake of hunters and their families, and generally by indigenous and marginal groups. Some countries explicitly recognize subsistence hunting as a legitimate form of wildlife use (Table 2).

Hunting for sport: Practiced for recreation and exercise with no other ulterior motive, mainly by upper and middle-class urban people. In most countries of the area hunting for sport is officially recognized and regulated by the legislation in force.

Commercial hunting: The targets of commercial hunting are both live and dead animals and their products for sale, primarily for profit. Commercial hunting is expressly prohibited in some countries and permitted in others, at least for some species (Table 2).

Hunting for scientific purposes: This is practiced solely by individuals or domestic or foreign institutions for the purpose of collecting animals for scientific research. A great many species, many of no interest as game, may be hunted under this heading. In some countries it includes the capture of live animals for zoos and for biomedical experimentation.

The capture of live animals for captive breeding or game preserves is treated separately under the National Law on Renewable Natural Resources of Colombia (127) as "species promotion".

Culling pest species: Several countries have special legislation for culling pest species. Some draw up lists of species which may be hunted anywhere at any time, even without a licence, whereas others stipulate that a purported pest species must be reviewed beforehand and grounds for its culling established.

The order of importance of the kinds of wildlife use in Latin American countries is a quantitative unknown, but statistics on the number of licences issued and the number of hide and animal exports do definitely underestimate the real total. Most hunters in Latin America do not comply with the game laws and the number of kills is unknown.

Table 3 summarizes the views of Latin American specialists consulted by questionnaire in an attempt to establish at least a qualitative order of importance for wildlife utilization patterns. These experts ranked the various wildlife uses in their country in order of importance based on the impact on the resource.

Table 2. Wildlife utilization in the legislation of selected Latin American countries. Meaning of symbols used: X = legislated utilization, GL = general licence, NL = no licence, No = expressly prohibited

Country and reference	Subsistence	Sport	Commercial	Culling	Scientific	Other
Argentina (25)		X	X	NL	X
Bolivia (62)	X	X	X	X	X
Brazil (76)		X2	No		X
Colombia (127)	NL	X2	X	X	X	Promotion
Costa Rica (135)	X	X	No		X
Chile (117)	X	X	X	X	X
Guatemala (249)		X	X		X
Mexico (387)		X	No		X
Nicaragua (429, 430)	X	X	X'		X
Panama (457)	X	X2	No		X
Paraguay (461)				X	X
Peru (467)	GL	X	X		GL	Health
Suriname (565)	NL	X		X	X
Trinidad and Tobago (584)		GL		NL	X
Uruguay (587, 589)		X	X3	NL
Venezuela (601)		X	X4	X	X

1 Only iguanas and caimans
² Temporarily prohibited
³ Only coypus and seals
⁴ Only capybaras and caimans

Table 3. The various kinds of hunting in Latin America ranked by impact on wildlife

Source: direct surveys, number of surveys per country in parentheses

Countries and number of responses	Subsistence	Hunting	Commercial	Collection	Scientific	Other
Mexico (6)	2	3	1	4		5 tourists
Nicaragua (1)	3	2	1*		4	*collecting, turtle eggs
El Salvador (1)	3	3	1
Costa Rica (3)	1	2	3			4 rural wardens
Panama (1)	1	2				3 indigenous people, 4 tourists
Colombia (4)	2	3		4		5 indigenous people
Venezuela (3)	1	2	3*	4		*chigüire, 5 indigenous people
Ecuador (1)	1	3	2*	4		*turtle companies
Bolivia (1)	1		2*			*timber cutters and bark collectors
Peru (4)	2	3	1		4*	*biomedical studies
Suriname (2)	2	3	1*	4**		*meat, live animals for export, *bird collectors
Brazil (5)	2	4	1	3*		*bird collectors
Paraguay (1)	2	3	1*			*poachers
Uruguay (2)	3	2	1*	4**		*nutrias, etc., **bird collectors
Chile (6)	3	2	1*		4	*includes artisanal hunting
Argentina (4)	3	2	1			4 farmers, 5 tourists

They made the point that subsistence hunting ranks first in several tropical American countries and is important in almost all. Hunting for sport ranks second or third, except in Bolivia and Brazil. Commercial hunting seems to have the greatest impact on wildlife in most of the countries, covering a heterogeneous range of activities from hunting for meat, hides and live animals to catching marine turtles and their eggs, to culling pest animals, particularly in southern South America.

Some surveys indicate bird collectors as a major user group, including the selective capture and breeding in captivity of songbirds and ornamental birds. Hunting for scientific purposes rarely achieves significant proportions, but often users of other kinds, such as bird collectors and live animal exporters, operate with this type of licence. Recently, some South American countries have set restrictions on the collection and export of scientific material by foreign institutions in order to protect their national scientific stocks.

Under the heading "others", Table 3 lists other uses included by the experts. "Tourists" refers to foreign sports hunters. Indigenous peoples comprise a major sector of subsistence hunters. Small-scale hunters hunt professionally on a small or medium scale and are thus listed under either commercial hunting or culling.

The various wildlife users and utilizations have their own special characteristics that set them apart. Knowing and understanding the causes and effects of these is crucial to framing management policies for the different wildlife populations. They are therefore covered in detail below.