Hunting and conservation of forest pigeons in São Tomé (West Africa)

Doutoramento em Biologia - Instituto Superior de Agronomia

On the island of São Tomé, four endemic species of fruit pigeons are hunted as food and/or as an economic resource. This thesis intended to collect and analyze the baseline data required for the management of pigeons, which take into account their importance as a resource but also their overall conservation value. For this, I used a combination of biological and social sampling methods. The results show that harvest of endemic pigeons is performed predominantly for commercial purposes by a small and specialized group of hunters, but is also widely practiced opportunistically by most hunters and rural inhabitants. The hunting pressure on the two least abundant species already determines their patterns of distribution and abundance, and their extraction is probably unsustainable. Harvesting of the most hunted species is potentially sustainable, but more research is essential to the definition of measures to manage the species. Only one species is not commercially hunted and exploitation for subsistence is sustainable. The conservation of the species on the long term requires the development of specific measures; it is essential to promote legal restrictions on hunting and trading, to search for economic alternatives for bird hunting and define strategies of education / awareness of consumers

FCT - PhD grant and the I&D project “Endemic pigeons of São Tomé: developing science-based conservation and sustainable use of African pigeons”