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Multiple #extinction drivers interact to drive the loss of the #Chacoan #peccary. New paper in Diversity & Distribution by Ricardo Torres and team shows that #hunting is the main pressure on peccaries, despite rampant #deforestation. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13701 @BiogeoBerlin
The Chacoan #peccary is very unique – the last survivor of an entire megafauna lineage – and it only occurs in the #GranChaco (more here: http://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/chacoan-peccary/ #EDGE).
The Chacoan peccary was thought to be extinct and known only from fossilized remains until the 1970s, when it was rediscovered (to Western science, it was of course known to local people) and made the cover of Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.189.4200.379
Our paper shows that hunting pressure has increased over much of the species range as industrialized agriculture has expanded.
Figure shows Chacoan peccary habitat suitability for 1985 (a) and 2015 (c), hunting pressure for 1985 (b) and 2015 (d) and core/sink map, resulting from overlaying the habitat suitability and hunting pressure maps, for 1985 (e) and 2015 (f).
Variance partitioning allowed us to separate the individual effects of hunting, deforestation, and climate change. Interestingly, #ClimateChange had a positive effect and would have led to more peccary habitat, but this was overridden by the strong and negative interaction of hunting and deforestation.
This paper started in a workshop held by the @IUCN Peccary Specialist Group – more here: https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/racing-against-time-to-save-the-tagua-and-its-vanishing-chaco-home/
https://www.iucn.org/our-union/commissions/group/iucn-ssc-peccary-specialist-group #IUCN