Foraging Wild Resources: Evolving Goals of an Ubiquitous Human Behavior

International audienceAlthough human foraging behavior, i.e. the method used to get food procurement from thewild, is the economic criterion usually used in the academic literature in order to definehunter-gatherer societies, it is restricted neither to these societies nor to this goal. It consists ofthe extraction of natural resources by means of various techniques, such as hunting, fishingand gathering. It is applied to a broad range of wild resources – aquatic and terrestrial, plants,animals and minerals – even though in some cases it could be limited only to some of theseresources such as the non-timber forest products (NTFPs). The aim of this paper is todemonstrate that while foraging is an ubiquitous human behavior, its goals are evolving withthe passage of time. More precisely these goals that exist today have been present in someform in the past, only their importance and emphasis has changed over time and with thehistorical, sociological and ecological contexts. While subsistence seems naturally the mostobvious motivation of human foraging behavior, the latter also occurs in various contextssuch as in mixed economies. Moreover, other goals – different from the biological one – alsoexist. Indeed, foraging can be a mean to obtain a – primary or secondary – source of incomeprovided through trade of harvested wild products. Socio-cultural goals may also motivatehuman foraging behavior. They are related to culture and heritage, recreational values, or toenvironmental conservation and sustainability, the latter being exemplified for instance by therecent movement of urban foragers