the JASs is published by the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia www.isita-org.com Subsistence hunting and exploitation of mammals in the Haut-Ogooué province, south-eastern Gabon

Summary- An ethnozoological research was conducted in the Haut-Ogooué Province, a poorly studied area of SE Gabon, to collect information on subsistence hunting activities. Specifi c aims of the study were to describe the hunting activities of local rural people and to gather information on game harvest. Th is kind of information is useful to both assess the human impact on wild mammals and better comprehend the livelihood strategies of local people. Seven villages within the study area were regularly visited, collecting information on the number of mammals killed, the hunting techniques used, and the prey destination (direct consumption by the hunter or bushmeat trade). During the study period, 432 mammals, belonging to 14 species were captured. Th e data collected evidenced that most of the animals captured were ungulates (57.3%) and rodents (26.4%), and that two species, i.e. the blue duiker and the brush-tailed porcupine, represented by themselves more than half of the entire off-take (58.5%). No signifi cant correlation was detected between the off-take and the village size. Local hunters adopted three diff erent hunting techniques: guns (86.1 % of hunters), nets (10.4%) and traps (1.6%), evidencing a larger use of fi re weapons rather than traditional netting and trapping techniques; however, the off-take was not correlated to the number of guns detected in each village surveyed. Bushmeat trade resulted important for local hunters since only a slightly higher percentage of animals (56%) was directly consumed at household level, while the remainder was sold. Th e bushmeat traffi c, defi ned as the number of animals sold, was not correlated to the size of villages and to the distance of each village surveyed to the main nearest market, i.e. the town of Franceville