It has been suggested that restoration of roadsides to native habitat can benefit wildlife by adding habitat and restoring connectivity between fragmented reserves. In Iowa, which has one of the highest road densities in the United States, roadside vegetation has traditionally been managed to maintain a monoculture of exotic grass. Recently, several Iowa counties have begun integrated roadside vegetation management, a program that both restores roadsides to native prairie vegetation and restricts the use of herbicides and mowing. We evaluated the effect of this management regime on butterfly populations along central Iowa roadsides. We surveyed 12 separate prairie roadside areas, comparing the abundance and species richness of disturbance-tolerant and habitat-sensitive butterflies in roadside prairies with those of nearby roadsides dominated by either weeds (primarily non-native legumes) or non-native grasses. We found that management of roadsides profoundly affected the butterfly community. Species richness of habitat-sensitive butterflies showed a two-fold increase in prairie compared with grassy and weedy roadsides ( p Ͻ 0.0001), and abundance increased almost five times more on the prairie than on grassy roadsides ( p Ͻ 0.02). Species richness of disturbance-tolerant butterflies showed no response to roadside management, although abundance was slightly higher in weedy and prairie roadsides than on grassy roadsides ( p Ͻ 0.01). Of all habitat variables explored, the species richness of plants in flower showed the strongest effect on mean richness and abundance of both disturbance-tolerant and habitat-sensitive butterfly species. Although there were higher concentrations of road-killed butterflies near weedy and prairie roadsides than on grassy roadsides, relative numbers indicated that mortality risk was more than twice as high on grassy roadsides ( p Ͻ 0.0001). Tracking studies showed that butterflies were less likely to exit prairie roadsides, indicating that their mortality rates may be lower and offering preliminary evidence that roadsides have the potential to be used as corridors. Overall, our results indicate that roadside restoration benefits butterfly populations. More detailed demographic data are necessary, however, to explore the possibility that roadsides are acting as sink habitat for some habitat-restricted species. Valor de la Conservación de la Restauración de Praderas Ruderales para Comunidades de MariposasResumen: Se ha sugerido que la restauración del hábitat nativo de los bordes de caminos puede ser benéfica para la vida silvestre al añadir hábitat y restaurar la conectividad entre reservas fragmentadas. En Iowa, con una de las densidades de carreteras más alta en los Estados Unidos, la vegetación ruderal tradicionalmente se ha manejado para mantener un monocultivo de pasto exótico. Recientemente, varios condados en Iowa han iniciado un programa de manejo integrado de la vegetación ruderal enfocado tanto a restaurar la vegetación de pradera nativa en los bordes de caminos como a restringir...

In Africa, overhunting of tropical wildlife for food remains an intractable issue. Donors and governments remain committed to invest in efforts to both conserve and allow the sustainable use of wildlife. Four principal barriers need to be overcome: (i) communities are not motivated to conserve wildlife long-term because they have no formal rights to benefit from wildlife, or to exclude others from taking it on their land; (ii) multispecies harvests, typical of bushmeat hunting scenarios, place large-bodied species at risk of extinction; (iii) wildlife production cannot expand, in the same way that livestock farming can, to meet the expected growth in consumer demand; and (iv) wildlife habitat is lost through conversion to agriculture, housing, transportation networks and extractive industries. In this review, we examine the actors involved in the use of wildlife as food and discuss the possible solutions required to address urban and rural bushmeat consumption. Interventions must tackle use and conservation of wildlife through the application of context-relevant interventions in a variety of geographies across Africa. That said, for any bushmeat solution to work, there needs to be concurrent and comparable investment in strengthening the effectiveness of protected area management and enforcement of wildlife conservation laws.

Several hundred species are hunted for wild meat in the tropics, supporting the diets, customs, and livelihoods of millions of people. However, unsustainable hunting is one of the most urgent threats to wildlife and ecosystems worldwide and has serious ramifications for people whose subsistence and income are tied to wild meat. Over the past 18 years, although research efforts have increased, scientific knowledge has largely not translated into action. One major barrier to progress has been insufficient monitoring and evaluation, meaning that the effectiveness of interventions cannot be ascertained. Emerging issues include the difficulty of designing regulatory frameworks that disentangle the different purposes of hunting, the large scale of urban consumption, and the implications of wild meat consumption for human health. To address these intractable challenges, wepropose eight new recommendations for research and action for sustainable wild meat use, which would support the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Interventions targeting consumer behavior may help to reduce demand for bushmeat in urban areas. Understanding the drivers of urban bushmeat consumption is crucial to guide such interventions; however the cultural and socio-psychological factors driving consumer behavior remain understudied. Through qualitative interviews with urban bushmeat consumers in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo, we investigated perceptions of bushmeat and other animal proteins, and social norms regulating urban demand for bushmeat. The perception of bushmeat as natural, tasty and healthy, and a rare luxury product functioning as a symbol of social status, underpins social norms to provide bushmeat. The main barriers to purchasing were cost and availability. Locally produced fish, meat, and poultry were positively perceived as organic and healthy, whereas frozen imported animal proteins were perceived negatively as transformed, of poor quality and taste, and unhealthy. Our findings provide an initial baseline understanding of social-psychological drivers shaping consumption that can inform the design of bushmeat demand reduction campaigns.

The trade of bushmeat from rural areas to supply burgeoning cities is a major conservation and livelihood concern. Using a whole-city sampling strategy we mapped the distribution and numbers of meat outlets in the Kinshasa-Brazzaville metropolitan area, two neighboring capital cities in Central Africa. We show that both cities differ in the number and density of meat outlets, with more in Brazzaville per area sampled and inhabitants. The number of meat outlets is related to human population densities and primarily concentrated along the banks of the Congo River, in the more affluent areas of the cities. Across the two cities, roughly 22% of all sampled markets (50% in Brazzaville and 19% in Kinshasa) and 24% of all visited restaurants (24% in each city) were selling bushmeat during our survey. Despite the relatively low number of establishments offering bushmeat for sale, extrapolated to the entire area and population of both cities, we expect the overall amount of wild animal meat consumed per annum to be significantly high. We suggest that the supply of such numbers of wild animal meat will strongly impact the animal populations sourcing these cities. Our data also indicate that the number of domestic meat outlets may be adequate to supply urban dwellers with sufficient animal protein.