Note: This article contains graphic images of dead animals that might be upsetting. Between 2018 and 2020, users of Facebook groups in Brazil shared more than 2,000 records of wildlife poaching, amounting to 4,658 dead animals: everything from pacas and armadillos to capybaras and various species of birds. That was the finding from a study carried out by a group of researchers led by Brazilian biologist Hani R. El Bizri from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development. They collected and analyzed data from the five most relevant Brazilian Facebook poaching groups, both open and private, to understand how the activity impacts biodiversity. By identifying the patterns of illegal hunting in Brazil, it was possible to map the municipalities and biomes in which poaching took place; estimate the number of poachers involved and the number of animals killed; identify the species affected; and count the amount of meat in tons, in order to know how much biomass was removed from the habitats. The survey showed that illegal hunting took place in all of the country’s biomes and in 14% of Brazilian municipalities, spread across all states. There were an estimated 1,400 poachers involved and a total of 29 metric tons of wild meat obtained from the activity. A total of 157 species were killed, from small amphibians to large mammals. Of these, 19 were threatened species, such as tapirs, peccaries, jacutinga birds and coandu-mirim dwarf porcupines, a species only described by science in…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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