THE SUSTAINABILITY OF SUBSISTENCE HUNTING IN THE NEOTROPICS

Hunting is an important component of native subsistence strategies in Amazonia. It is also a serious threat to biodiversity in some areas. W e present data on the faunal harvests of two native Neotropical subsis tence hunting peoples, Machiguenga bow-hunters and Piro shotgun hunter s of Peru. The rate of annual harvest per square kilometer of catchmen t is estimated and compared to rates of sustainable harvest calculated by Robinson and Redford (1991). We used indicators of prey abundance to test for the depletion of species that hunters killed in numbers gr eater than what the model predicts to be sustainable. As predicted, we found the strongest evidence for local depletion of the large primate s at the Piro site. The woolly monkey (Lagothrix lagothricha) harvest at the Machiguenga village and the deer (Mazama americana) and collare d peccary (Tayassu tajacu) harvests at both sites were not predicted t o be unsustainable and we found no evidence for depletion. Machiguenga bow hunters killed spider monkeys (Ateles paniscus) in quantities tha t were slightly above what the model predicted to be sustainable, yet we found no evidence for depletion. Differential species vulnerability , catchment size, and consumer population size could be important fact ors in determining sustainability.