Impact of the Venezuelan economic crisis on wild populations of animals and plants

Because of the relatively well-defined starting date of Venezuela's current economic crisis (early 1983), it provides an ideal model for exploring the effect of worsening economic conditions on biodiversity use. I focus on changing harvest intensities of wood, wildlife and fish, by comparing harvest patterns prior to and after the onset of the economic crisis (pre- and post-1983). Specifically, I analyze figures for (1) wood production, (2) ornamental fish exports, (3) commercial harvests of spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus) and (4) capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris), (5) national and (6) international illegal wildlife trade, and (7) Venezuela's fisheries. I also explore whether current resource use practices appear to be sustainable or not by concentrating on fisheries, as these have abundant data on both the annual per-species catch and the harvest effort. In general, the harvest of wood, wildlife and fish increased sharply after 1983 reaching previously unrecorded levels, growing at a higher rate than the human population. Also, the catch-per-unit effort of many popular fish species in local markets has declined, thus indicating an unsustainable harvest. Although more than one mechanism may explain these results, most of the evidence suggests that contraction of the economy led to increasing unemployment and the workforce shifted to natural resource exploitation as an alternative source of income and food. Regulating the growth of this largely informal and diffuse population of direct resource users will require innovative and creative policies both in Venezuela and other developing countries undergoing similar processes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.