Why people hunt.

(a) Functions of hunting as an interaction between HDI and the respective hunting functions, ecological (population control, HWCs), social (entertainment, sociocultural hunting), economic function (subsistence, commercial hunting). The hunting index refers to whether the function is one of the main motivations or only a negligible motivation for hunting in the PA. The categories “ecological function” and “social function” displayed a larger hunting motivation with an increasing HDI. In contrast, the economic category revealed a clearly decreasing hunting motivation; the functions split at the Global South-North divide (grey dashed line), black dotted line = mean (the data underlying this figure can be found in S4 Data). Human–wildlife interactions. (b) Hunting: The probability of a high threat through hunting decreased along the S-N gradient (S5 Data). c) HWC-driven hunting: The probability of high threats due to HWCs in relation to human population density (inhabitants/km2) revealed an increasing trajectory with human densities (S6 Data). The dashed line depicts the expected mean of the predicted posterior distribution; the coloured areas depict the 33% and 66% credibility intervals. Transparent points are binned probabilities. The size of the bubbles corresponds to the respective number of PAs. Filled points: original data; vertical grey dashed line: Global South-North divide of our data (0.75). HDI, Human Development Index; HWC, human–wildlife conflict; PA, protected area.