Project type: Associated

What we’re doing

The Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme is designed to reduce hunting of wildlife to sustainable levels, protecting endangered wildlife species, conserving biodiversity, maintaining the essential ecological roles of wildlife within forested and savanna ecosystems, and securing stocks and flows of provisioning ecosystem services.

The SWM Programme works in 16 countries, developing innovative, collaborative and scalable new approaches to conserve wild animals and protect ecosystems, whilst at the same time improving the livelihoods of indigenous peoples and rural communities who depend on these resources. Monitoring and Evaluation is a key part of the project, which has collected baseline information on wild meat use in each of the project sites, as well as monitoring the impacts of project interventions on people and wildlife.

In 2024, the SWM Programme started a two-year programme of work in Asia and the Pacific, focusing on understanding the key drivers of wild meat use and consumption in the region, the risks of zoonotic spillover associated with this use, and options for sustainable and safe use of wild meat. As part of this regional project, SWM partners are conducting the first comprehensive regional assessment of wild meat value chains across Asia and the Pacific.

Systematic review of the wild meat literature in the region

We are conducting a scoping review / systematic mapping exercise to identify literature on wild meat in Asia-Pacific and understand how wild meat systems in Asia-Pacific are managed, reported and monitored. We also aim to understand what interventions (activities to manage wild meat sustainably) have been implemented in Asia-Pacific countries and identify knowledge gaps at the country-level.

Regional analysis of wild meat use in the Asia-Pacific region

While conducting the scoping review, we identified studies and authors who published primary data on hunting offtakes, consumption, and market sales. Other data sources from various projects and initiatives were identified through online surveys and in close collaboration with SWM Programme partners and other key stakeholders working on these topics in the region. The wild meat use data from these sources is currently being formatted prior to entry into the WILDMEAT Use database, and will then be used in regional data analyses aimed at 1) describing the key characteristics of wild meat use in the region, including an overview of the wild species and the volumes hunted, consumed and/or traded, the main uses of wild meat and the market prices; and 2) assessing the environmental and socioeconomic predictors of market characteristics such as price and species composition.