'~.~. "!t, 7 ~ ELSEVIER 0006-3207(96)0001 0-9 Biological Conservation 77 (1996) 115-123 Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Limited Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0006-3207/96/$15.00+0.00 POPULATION STATUS OF WHITE-LIPPED Tayassu pecari AND COLLARED PECCARIES T. tajacu IN HUNTED AND UNHUNTED AMAZONIAN FORESTS Carlos A. Peres Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade de Sdo Paulo, Caixa Postal 11.461, S6o Paulo - SP 05422, Brazil (Received 4 January 1995; accepted 10 November 1995) Abstract Data on the local abundance and residency status are presented for two of the most important game species of terrestrial vertebrates in neotropical forests, the white- lipped peccary Tayassu pecari and collared peccary Tayassu tajacu. These data are based on a long-term series (1987-1994) of line-transect censuses conducted at forest sites in central-western and eastern Brazilian Amazonia using transects of 4-5 km at each site. Sur- veys were conducted in four unhunted sites and 19 sites subject to varying degrees of hunting. Censused sites consisted of different types of unflooded (terra firme) and flooded (vfirzea) forest, giving a combined census distance of 2368 kin. Evidence of the larger-bodied white-lipped peccary was detected at only 13 of the 23 sites surveyed, even though these forests had not been subject to habitat disturbance. Collared peccaries, on the other hand, persisted even in the most heavily hunted sites, though the numbers recorded were inversely related to hunting intensity. The large herds of white-lipped pec- caries appear to be rare and move widely even in remote terra firme Jorests, even those which have been entirely spared of hunting, perhaps because of low density of key resource patches. In contrast, the ubiquitous collared pec- caries live in small herds and appear to be year-round residents in presumably much smaller home ranges at both hunted and unhunted sites. The implications of pec- car)' residency status and herd size are discussed in the context of differential susceptibility to hunting. Copy- right © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Keywords: peccary, Tayassu, mammals, game hunting, Amazonian forests. INTRODUCTION The white-lipped peccary Tayassu pecari and collared peccary Tayassu tajacu comprise two of the most pre- Correspondence to: C.A. Peres, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK; e-mail: C.Peres@uea.ac.uk 115 ferred game species m Amazonian forests (see reviews in Kiltie, 1980: Redford & Robinson, 1987), often head- ing the list of kills consumed by Amerindians and non- tribal peoples (e.g. Smith, 1976; Ayres et al., 1991; Vickers, 1991; Bodmer et al., 1994). These two sympatric congeners, however, differ considerably from one another in their morphology, ecology and herd structure (Ter- borgh & Kiltie, 1976; Kiltie, 1981a; Bodmer, 1989, 1990), which could affect their susceptibility to hunting. For instance, the larger-bodied white-lipped peccary (c.32 kg) forms the largest herds and foraging group biomass of all neotropical ungulates, often travelling in groups exceed- ing 200 individuals which can have a combined group biomass of >4,8 tonnes (Sowls, 1984; Mayer & Wetzel, 1987; Peres, personal observations). This is in sharp con- trast to the smaller collared peccary (c.25 kg), the herds of which only rarely exceed l0 individuals (Kiltie & Ter- borgh, 1983; Robinson & Eisenberg, 1985). Perhaps in order to meet the high absolute metabolic requirements of such large groups, white-lipped peccaries (hereafter, white-lips) appear to exercise some of the most remark- able long-distance movements (sensu Sinclair, 1984) of any non-volant mammal in neotropical forests (Fragoso, 1994). This may render populations of this species highly vulnerable to local extinction in fragmented forest land- scapes, a trend that has been widely illustrated by their widespread disappearance from small forest isolates in the Atlantic forest of southeastern Brazil (A. Keurogh- lian, pers. comm.; F. Olmos, pers. comm.) and Central America (March, 1993; Timm, 1994). Amazonian forests along navigable white-water trib- utaries of the SolimOes (-- upper Amazon) river have been subject to different degrees of firearm hunting since the mass influx of northeastern Brazilian rubber- tappers in the 1890s. Peccaries in these areas have thus been killed for meat (and to a lesser extent for pelts) by traditional weapons for thousands of years, and by firearms for approximately one century. The interaction between large foraging groups roaming over large areas (Fragoso, 1994) and chronic hunting pressure could, therefore, lead to drastic population declines and disap- pearances of white-lips even in areas completely unal-