Abstract
Over the last few decades, the landscape of Borneo has drastically changed from primary forests to a mosaic of secondary forests and crop plantations, and more recently to the monocultures of single crop plantations. At the same time, livelihoods have become more linked to urban economies. To evaluate the effects of these changes on hunting activity, 1050 households in 34 villages in the Kemena and Tatau basins in Bintulu, central Sarawak, were studied. Using regression analysis, the importance of landscape type, the proportion of inhabited bilik and livelihood activities were analysed as factors affecting hunting activity. Results show that both environmental and social transitions are important factors that influence hunting activities. This research contributes to the understanding of current human–animal relations in view of the increasing expansion of oil palm and tree plantations in insular Southeast Asia.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Hunted animals’ here refers to animals which were successfully captured by hunters.
- 2.
RM1 was equivalent to approximately US$0.25 to US$0.32 in 2012.
- 3.
In Chap. 8, Hiromitsu Samejima and Jason Hon indicate that those species are abundant in secondary forests around the villages. Villagers surveyed for this study also explained that sambar deer, barking deer and mouse dear inhabit secondary forests and acacia plantations .
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Acknowledgements
This research was conducted with permission of the Sarawak Planning Unit and Sarawak Forest Department. We thank Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and the Sarawak Forestry Corporation for supporting this research. Research funds were provided by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) 22221010 ‘Planted Forests in Equatorial Southeast Asia: Human-Nature Interactions in High Biomass Society’ from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. We greatly appreciate the help and understanding of the people in the study villages. We also thank Jackie Imamura for helping us with English editing.
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Kato, Y., Samejima, H. (2020). The Effects of Landscape and Livelihood Transitions on Hunting in Sarawak. In: Ishikawa, N., Soda, R. (eds) Anthropogenic Tropical Forests. Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7513-2_14
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