Are Bushmeat Hunters Profit Maximizers or Simply Brigands of Opportunity?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Morra, Wayne A., Hearn, Gail W., Buck, Andrew J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Morra, Wayne A.
Hearn, Gail W.
Buck, Andrew J.
author_facet Morra, Wayne A.
Hearn, Gail W.
Buck, Andrew J.
contents Bushmeat hunters on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea use shotguns and snares to capture wild arboreal and ground animals for sale in the Malabo Bushmeat market. Two tools for the analysis of economic efficiency, the production possibilities frontier and isorevenue line, can be used to explain the post hoc changing spatial distribution of takeoff rates of bushmeat. This study analyzes changes in technical efficiencies over time and in different locations for the open access wildlife hunted on Bioko for the last ten years. Due to inadequate refrigeration in the field and the bushmeat market, animals must be sold quickly. The result is a takeoff distribution that is not efficient, consequently too many of the wrong species of animals are harvested. The larger, slower-breeding mammals, such as monkeys disappear before the smaller, faster-breeding mammals, such as blue duikers and pouched rats, promoting a steepening of the production possibilities frontier, inducing a greater takeoff of monkeys than the expected efficient level. Soon after hunters penetrate into a new area, the relative selling price of monkeys exceeds the rate of transformation between ground animals and arboreal animals triggering inefficient and unsustainable harvests
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_23559
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Are Bushmeat Hunters Profit Maximizers or Simply Brigands of Opportunity?
Morra, Wayne A.
Hearn, Gail W.
Buck, Andrew J.
General Economics
Economics
Bushmeat hunters on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea use shotguns and snares to capture wild arboreal and ground animals for sale in the Malabo Bushmeat market. Two tools for the analysis of economic efficiency, the production possibilities frontier and isorevenue line, can be used to explain the post hoc changing spatial distribution of takeoff rates of bushmeat. This study analyzes changes in technical efficiencies over time and in different locations for the open access wildlife hunted on Bioko for the last ten years. Due to inadequate refrigeration in the field and the bushmeat market, animals must be sold quickly. The result is a takeoff distribution that is not efficient, consequently too many of the wrong species of animals are harvested. The larger, slower-breeding mammals, such as monkeys disappear before the smaller, faster-breeding mammals, such as blue duikers and pouched rats, promoting a steepening of the production possibilities frontier, inducing a greater takeoff of monkeys than the expected efficient level. Soon after hunters penetrate into a new area, the relative selling price of monkeys exceeds the rate of transformation between ground animals and arboreal animals triggering inefficient and unsustainable harvests
title Are Bushmeat Hunters Profit Maximizers or Simply Brigands of Opportunity?
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23559