Wildmeat access in the Brazilian Amazon 865


rural–urban mobility, which concerns the circulation of people (both rural and urban residents), goods and ideas between urban and rural areas (Nasuti et al., 2015; Dodd, 2020). Rural–urban mobility could affect livelihoods and natural resource use (Eloy et al., 2015). Many rural–urban migrants in Amazonia circulate between both areas, thus retaining rural consumption habits and stimulating urban markets for forest products (Padoch et al., 2008). However, rural–urban migrants also acquire forest and agricultural products, including wildmeat, outside of market exchanges. Based on redistribution (e.g. gifting) and reciprocity, this so-called economy of affection can equal trade in some households (WinklerPrins & de Souza, 2005; Minzenberg & Wallace, 2011). Social relations underlie wildmeat con- sumption in urban and peri-urban locations in the Brazilian Amazon (Morsello et al., 2015; Carignano Torres et al., 2021).


Urbanization in the forested tropics brings changes to


rural areas through increased market access, remittances from urban relatives and households that become multi- sited, spreading their time between rural and urban areas (Hecht et al., 2015). Rural–urban movements have intensi- fied because of the greater affordability of motorized river transport and the desire to access market goods and services (Dodd, 2020). This rural–urban mobility could change food consumption patterns (Kramer et al., 2009) and increase rural–urban trade (Padoch et al., 2008), thereby altering for- est use (Hecht et al., 2015). For instance, urban visitation re- duces wildmeat consumption by rural people through either increasing domesticated meat consumption or stimulating wildmeat trade at the expense of their own consumption (Chaves et al., 2017). Understanding rural–urban wildmeat flows and the


scale of consumption in the forested tropics is important to achieving wildlife management that balances conserva- tion with the well-being of people, including food security (Cawthorn & Hoffman, 2015). However, we lack informa- tion regarding wildmeat access amongst both urban and rural Amazonian populations and its linkages to rural– urban mobility, although both aspects have been studied separately (van Vliet et al., 2015a,b; Chaves et al., 2017;El Bizri et al., 2020a,b). Our aim was to understand how consumption of terres-


trial wildlife species (hereinafter wildmeat) varies between urban and rural areas and whether urban consumption is shaped by rural–urban mobility. Based on field surveys in four municipalities in a highly forested region in the central Brazilian Amazon we examined: (1) differences in patterns of wildmeat consumption between urban and rural areas based on consumption frequency, species consumed and preferred and means of acquiring wildmeat; (2) the associ- ation between rural–urban mobility and wildmeat access; and (3) rural–urban differences in total wildmeat demand (accounting for per-capita consumption and number of


consumers) in a study region of 43 riverine, geographically isolated municipalities, based on extrapolation from our empirical data.


Study area


We conducted our research in the municipalities of Caapiranga, Maués, Jutaí and Ipixuna in Amazonas State, Brazil (Fig. 1). Each municipality constitutes a town uncon- nected to the road network and surrounded by an extensive, mostly intact forested area (.90% of municipal forest cover remaining), in which riverine communities are lo- cated. There are also some non-riverine rural settlements around each town (connected by rough roads) but these were not investigated. The study towns are distant from one another, relatively isolated and vary in watershed loca- tion, urban population (c. 13,300–65,000 people; IBGE, 2020) and fluvial distance to the state capital, Manaus (162–2,566 km; Parry et al., 2018; Table 1), which underpins their variable access to larger markets and services (private and public). These municipalities have low development outcomes (Human Development Index = 0.49–0.59) and maintain significant rural populations (41.4–57.3% of the municipal population in 2010; IBGE, 2010). The four study towns have grown substantially (mean


population growth = 47.2%, range = 22–65%) between 2000 and the last census in 2010, although the total municipal po- pulations have been growing to a lesser extent or even declin- ing (mean = 21.6%, range = –19.8–50.8%; IBGE, 2000, 2010). This rapid growth of small cities is typical in Latin America (Baeumler et al., 2021), leading to an increase in the propor- tion of the population of Amazonia living in urban areas (i.e. urbanization). Growth in our study towns reflects ongoing rural–urban migration (Parry et al., 2010) and population growth because of the age structure of the population, with a large proportion of young people. The main economic activities of the municipalities’


inhabitants are harvesting non-timber forest products, small-scale fishing and agriculture. Also important are public-sector employment in urban areas and government cash transfers to low-income households. The rural populations are distributed mainly in riverine communities of various sizes, including along remote sub- tributaries. These river dwellers are peasants of mixed ancestry (Indigenous, African and European backgrounds) who live inside and outside Sustainable Use Reserves (human-inhabited protected areas). Although the study areas are also home to Amerindian societies, we did not include these in our study. To estimate total wildmeat demand in urban and rural


areas in the region, we included population size data for all 43 river-dependent municipalities in Amazonas State (Chacón-Montalván et al., 2021), constituting 77.1% of the state’s area and 65.8% of the population outside of Manaus.


Oryx, 2022, 56(6), 864–876 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321001575


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