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Benefits of wildlife consumption to child nutrition in a biodiversity hotspot.

ABSTRACT: Terrestrial wildlife is the primary source of meat for hundreds of millions of people throughout the developing world. Despite widespread human reliance on wildlife for food, the impact of wildlife depletion on human health remains poorly understood. Here we studied a prospective longitudinal cohort of 77 preadolescent children (under 12 y of age) in rural northeastern Madagascar and show that consuming more wildlife was associated with significantly higher hemoglobin concentrations. Our empirical models demonstrate that removing access to wildlife would induce a 29% increase in the numbers of children suffering from anemia and a tripling of anemia cases among children in the poorest households. The well-known progression from anemia to future disease demonstrates the powerful and far-reaching effects of lost wildlife access on a variety of human health outcomes, including cognitive, motor, and physical deficits. Loss of access to wildlife could arise either from the diligent enforcement of existing conservation policy or from unbridled unsustainable harvest, leading to depletion. Conservation enforcement would enact a more rapid restriction of resources, but self-depletion would potentially lead, albeit more slowly, both to irrevocable local wildlife extinctions and loss of the harvested resource. Our research quantifies costs of reduced access to wildlife for a rural community in Madagascar and illuminates pathways that may broadly link reduced natural resource access to declines in childhood health.

SUBMITTER: Golden CD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3241784 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Benefits of wildlife consumption to child nutrition in a biodiversity hotspot.

Golden Christopher D CD Golden Christopher D CD Fernald Lia C H LC Brashares Justin S JS Rasolofoniaina B J Rodolph BJ Kremen Claire C

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20111121 49

Terrestrial wildlife is the primary source of meat for hundreds of millions of people throughout the developing world. Despite widespread human reliance on wildlife for food, the impact of wildlife depletion on human health remains poorly understood. Here we studied a prospective longitudinal cohort of 77 preadolescent children (under 12 y of age) in rural northeastern Madagascar and show that consuming more wildlife was associated with significantly higher hemoglobin concentrations. Our empiric ...[more]

PMID: 22106297

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Project description:Livestock production may improve nutritional outcomes of pregnant women and children by increasing household income, availability of nutrient-dense foods, and women's empowerment. Nevertheless, the relationship is complex, and the nutritional status of children may be impaired by presence of or proximity to livestock and their pathogens. In this paper, we review the benefits and risks of livestock production on child nutrition. Evidence supports the nutritional benefits of livestock farming through income, production, and women's empowerment. Increasing animal source food consumption requires a combination of efforts, including improved animal management so that herd size is adequate to meet household income needs and consumption and addressing sociocultural and gendered norms. Evidence supports the inclusion of behavior change communication strategies into livestock production interventions to facilitate the sustainability of nutritional benefits over time, particularly interventions that engage women and foster dimensions of women's empowerment. In evaluating the risks of livestock production, evidence indicates that a broad range of enteric pathogens may chronically infect the intestines of children and, in combination with dietary deficits, may cause environmental enteric dysfunction (EED), a chronic inflammation of the gut. Some of the most important pathogens associated with EED are zoonotic in nature with livestock as their main reservoir. Very few studies have aimed to understand which livestock species contribute most to colonization with these pathogens, or how to reduce transmission. Control at the point of exposure has been investigated in a few studies, but much less effort has been spent on improving animal husbandry practices, which may have additional benefits. There is an urgent need for dedicated and long-term research to understand which livestock species contribute most to exposure of young children to zoonotic enteric pathogens, to test the potential of a wide range of intervention methods, to assess their effectiveness in randomized trials, and to assure their broad adaptation and sustainability. This review highlights the benefits and risks of livestock production on child nutrition. In addition to identifying research gaps, findings support inclusion of poor gut health as an immediate determinant of child undernutrition, expanding the established UNICEF framework which includes only inadequate diet and disease.

Project description:We determined the environmental correlates of vascular plant biodiversity in the Baetic-Rifan region, a plant biodiversity hotspot in the western Mediterranean. A catalog of the whole flora of Andalusia and northern Morocco, the region that includes most of the Baetic-Rifan complex, was compiled using recent comprehensive floristic catalogs. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) of the different ecoregions of Andalusia and northern Morocco were conducted to determine their floristic affinities. Diversity patterns were studied further by focusing on regional endemic taxa. Endemic and nonendemic alpha diversities were regressed to several environmental variables. Finally, semi-partial regressions on distance matrices were conducted to extract the respective contributions of climatic, altitudinal, lithological, and geographical distance matrices to beta diversity in endemic and nonendemic taxa. We found that West Rifan plant assemblages had more similarities with Andalusian ecoregions than with other nearby northern Morocco ecoregions. The endemic alpha diversity was explained relatively well by the environmental variables related to summer drought and extreme temperature values. Of all the variables, geographical distance contributed by far the most to spatial turnover in species diversity in the Baetic-Rifan hotspot. In the Baetic range, elevation was the most significant driver of nonendemic species beta diversity, while lithology and elevation were the main drivers of endemic beta diversity. Despite the fact that Andalusia and northern Morocco are presently separated by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the Baetic and Rifan mountain ranges have many floristic similarities - especially in their western ranges - due to past migration of species across the Strait of Gibraltar. Climatic variables could be shaping the spatial distribution of endemic species richness throughout the Baetic-Rifan hotspot. Determinants of spatial turnover in biodiversity in the Baetic-Rifan hotspot vary in importance between endemic and nonendemic species.

Dataset Information

Benefits of wildlife consumption to child nutrition in a biodiversity hotspot.

Publications

Benefits of wildlife consumption to child nutrition in a biodiversity hotspot.

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