Ensuring the sustainability of wildlife hunting in tropical forests is crucial to guarantee the conservation of game species and safeguard the food security and livelihoods of millions of forest dwellers. Sustainable hunting requires harvesting a population at the same rate or lower than its natural rate of growth; population losses never can exceed the species’ ability to recover. The ability of different prey to withstand various levels of harvest without depletion varies with the population dynamics and their biological performance. Although every species is able to withstand some level of harvest, some are particularly susceptible to overexploitation and local extinction because of slow reproductive rates and/or low population densities. An effective wildlife management programme depends on identifying those species most susceptible to uncontrolled harvesting and refrain from killing more than would be sustainable. The intrinsic rate of increase shows the species availability to withstand moderate levels of harvesting, and predicts how particular prey species will respond to different levels of harvesting. The intrinsic rate of increase is related to reproductive parameters of the species, including puberty, seasonality, prolificacy and annual birth rate of female offspring. Fast reproducing mammals are more suitable as wild meat species, because they can withstand greater levels of hunting than slower reproducing species. Therefore, knowledge on reproductive biology of species is fundamental to understand the dynamics of wild mammal populations in the Amazon and to measure the responses and reliance of these populations to human disturbance, such as hunting. Studying the life histories of long-lived mammal species by traditional means can take years and in tropical areas is beset by logistical and financial restrictions. Herein we propose that estimates of the rate of increase in wild populations based on reproductive parameters determined taking advantage of byproducts originated from the subsistence hunting in local Amazon communities. The overall objective of this project is to evaluate the sustainability of hunting wild populations of mammals from the Amazon. The specific objectives of the project are: 1) to determine the reproductive physiology of wildlife populations, 2) to explain the different life history of wild species according to their reproductive biology, and ii) to use this information to better understand the sustainability of hunting of most important hunted mammal species in the Amazon.
