Trophy Hunting May Drive Extinctions, Due to Climate Change

[NickB79]

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/wildlife-watch-trophy-hunting-extinctions-evolution/

Trophy hunters, as well as poachers who “harvest” the big males—antelopes and deer with the largest horns and antlers, elephants with the longest tusks, or lions with the most impressive manes—are putting those species at greater risk of extinction with climate change.

That’s the finding of a new study published today by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, England, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. “Trophy” animals tend to be the most evolutionarily fit and possess the high-quality genes a population of animals need to adapt quickly to a changing environment, says evolutionary ecologist and lead author Robert Knell. “They also father a high proportion of the offspring. But if they’re killed before they can spread their ‘good genes’ around, this reduces the overall fitness and resilience of that population.”

When environmental conditions change—a shift in seasonal rainfall or warmer temperatures—the risk of extinction increases dramatically, even with a healthy population of animals apparently unaffected by trophy hunting, Knell says.

So, hunting itself doesn't drive the species to extinction, but when the climate shifts, the less beneficial genes spread by the inferior males left by the hunters amplify the die-off in the population. Interesting study.