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Brief Report

Women in the Hunt: A More Useful and Sustainable Hunt for Biodiversity?

by
Javier Pérez-González
1,*,
Sebastián J. Hidalgo-de-Trucios
1,
Carlos Sánchez-García
2 and
Juan Ignacio Rengifo Gallego
3
1
Biology and Ethology Unit, Veterinary Faculty, University of Extremadura, 10003 Cáceres, Spain
2
Fundación Artemisan, Avda. Rey Santo 8, 13001 Ciudad Real, Spain
3
Departamento de Arte y Ciencias del Territorio, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Extremadura, 10003 Cáceres, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2023, 15(9), 7439; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097439
Submission received: 15 January 2023 / Revised: 20 April 2023 / Accepted: 28 April 2023 / Published: 30 April 2023
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Hunting Committed to the Biodiversity Conservation)
Browse Figures
Versions Notes

Abstract

:
Recreational hunting can have positive consequences on biodiversity conservation, but in many countries the number of hunters is declining. This downward trend threatens the sustainability of an important human activity that can be used as a tool for wildlife management and biodiversity conservation. On the other hand, in developed countries there is an upward trend in the number of female hunters. In this study, we analyzed women and men’s hunting preferences in Spain, focusing our attention on the game species they were interested in. We found that female hunters were more interested than male hunters in hunting big game species. We discussed potential consequences of our results on the sustainability of hunting and biodiversity conservation.

1. Introduction

There is a widespread agreement that the impact of recreational hunting on wildlife depends on the socio-ecological context [1,2,3,4]. On the one hand, studies show that recreational hunting can positively affect wildlife and biodiversity conservation, e.g., [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Licenses, fees or any kind of economic transaction related to hunting, generates funds that support protection, management, research, or monitoring of wildlife, as well as contributing to nature shielding through public stewardship [9,13].
Furthermore, high densities of game species can have negative impacts on ecosystems through inter-specific interactions [14,15,16], and hunting can be an important tool for controlling populations of overabundant species [5,17,18,19]. Ungulate species, such as wild boar (Sus scrofa), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) or red deer (Cervus elaphus), may put the conservation of natural vegetation under high densities at risk with cascading effects on other animal species [17,20,21]. Wild boar and wild pigs (S. s. domestica) might also have high predation rates on invertebrate and vertebrate species; this effect being more alarming under high densities and as an invasive predator [22,23].
On the other hand, recreative hunting can have negative effects on game species and the environment. Hunting can alter the behavior of target and non-target species [24,25], modify evolutionary processes that affect the development of individual traits [26,27], alter forest regeneration [15,28], or remove harvested preys that are not available for large predators [29,30,31]. Hunting based on the rearing and releasing of game species and certain management tools, such as supplementary feeding, may also negatively impact wildlife and ecosystems [32,33].
Due to the context dependent effect of recreative hunting on wildlife, the development of game management strategies according to local circumstances can be used to ensure a sustainable hunting activity, favoring strengths and controlling weaknesses [19,34]. Regardless of the difficulty of reaching general conclusions in relation to the impact of hunting on wildlife, hunting can be an important tool for wildlife management when orientated to preserve biodiversity, develop local livelihoods, maintain human activities and keep public health [1,9]; in the absence of other activities, in some circumstances, hunting may be the only tool available.
In Europe and North America, the number of hunters has been decreasing for several decades [35,36]. To preserve hunting as a wildlife management tool, professional hunting organizations and wildlife government agencies try to increase hunter recruitment, retention and reactivation [37,38,39]. However, this downward trend is expected in the coming future [40,41], and efforts have been conducted to understand and mitigate the expected negative effects [35]. On the other hand, despite current female participation, it is still very low relative to men [42,43], and available research shows that women’s involvement in hunting is on the rise [44]. Since the cultural and evolutionary contexts for men and women in hunting participation are different [44,45,46,47], the increase of female participation might imply changes in how recreational hunting is conducted [48]. Moreover, the relevant role of women in family decisions might be important in medium and long-term hunting recruitment [45]. Taking into account that hunting uses wildlife as a resource, the increase of female participation may help to ensure sustainability and favor biodiversity conservation.
In Spain, hunting is a highly practiced outdoor activity with important socio-economic implications. In 2020 there were 946,192 hunting licenses [49], and when considering federative hunting licenses in 2021 (n = 337,326), hunting was the second most practiced sport after football (n = 907,223) [50]. Almost 85% of the Spanish territory is declared as hunting ground, and in 2020 there were 32,187 hunting grounds (either public or private) in which 17 million animals were harvested [49]. In 2016 the overall expenditure of hunting in Spain was €5,470 million, equivalent to €6,475 million when calculated as gross domestic product (0.3% of the total Spanish GDP for that year) with a tax revenue generation of €614 million and supporting 186,758 full-time equivalent jobs [51]. Hence, hunting constitutes a major source of income, especially in some rural areas in which it can be considered a key economic activity.
During the last decades, the populations’ trends of small game species in Spain, such as red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa), wild rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), Iberian hare (Lepus granatensis) and turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur), have experienced marked declines, and wildlife management strategies conducted at different scales aim to reverse this situation, mainly focusing on habitat improvement, predator removal and sustainable hunting [52]. On the other side of the coin are the populations of big game species, which have experienced a marked increase [53], and in some cases have become a threat for human activities, such as the wild boar, red deer and roe deer, which are often involved in vegetation damage [15,17], disease transmission [54] and vehicle collisions [55]. For instance, deer species have been shown to severely impact woody vegetation of Mediterranean forest [15], and wild boar are expected to be overabundant in arable farming areas where they can cause crop damages [17]. Moreover, tuberculosis prevalence in Spanish populations of wild boar and red deer can reach high levels [56,57], and tuberculosis is a zoonotic infectious disease that threatens biodiversity, countries’ economies, and public health [58,59]. In the specific case of the wild boar, its predatory effect on young rabbits and nests of red-legged partridge (the main small game species in Spain), as well as on other ground-nesting birds’ nests is significant [60,61,62]. In this scenario of big game species overabundance, hunting can play a key role in regulating ungulate populations [19], although the management actions required are highly context dependent [17].
As in other developed countries, the number of hunters is decreasing in Spain [36]. Apart from the negative socio-economic consequences, this decline has adverse implications for the control of big game species, such as wild boar [36], for the game management and recovery of small hunting species [63] and their collateral effects on other free-living fauna. Contrarily, despite the proportion of female hunters remaining very low compared to male counterparts (in 2021, 0.012 of hunters were females), their participation has quadrupled over the last 10 years (Figure 1 in [49]). This might not offset the general decline in the near future [44], but the relevant role of women in hunters recruitment [45] can be an important element in the sustainability of the activity at the medium and long term. Furthermore, differences between women and men in their hunting preferences might have consequences on wildlife within a framework of biodiversity conservation.
In this study, we analyzed the interest of female hunters in different game species in Spain. As control, a sample of male hunters was studied, and we discussed the possible consequences of female hunters’ preferences on wildlife conservation.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Collection

The methodological process involved the use of a specific survey that was designed to know the interest and preferences of female and male hunters about several aspects. The survey was distributed by Spanish hunting associations between October 2021 and August 2022. We also contacted hunters who attended hunting events, such as hunting fairs and hunters’ meetings. The results of the surveys were the alphanumeric information that was used in this work.
In the surveys, we asked women and men about their interest in hunting each game species. The interest was recorded with six values: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 with 0 representing very low interest and 5 very high interest. Hunters were asked to express their interest in the following big game species: roe deer, red deer, fallow deer (Dama dama), wild boar, mouflon (Ovis aries musimon), chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica), Iberian wild goat (Capra pyrenaica), Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia), Balearian boc (Capra aegagrus), and Iberian wolf (Canis lupus), and the following small game species: rabbit, Iberian hare, red-legged partridge, ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus colchicus), common quail (Coturnix coturnix), pigeons (Columba ssp.), turtle dove, woodcock (Scolopax rusticola), thrushes (Turdus ssp.), starling (Sturnus ssp.), lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), magpie (Pica pica), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), and waterfowl.
The number of surveys received were 328 for women and 1334 for men. Considering the number of federative licenses in 2021 [47], surveys were conducted by 8.1% of female hunters and 0.4% of male hunters.

2.2. Statistical Analyses

Due to the high number of variables related to the interest in hunting game species and the high correlation between these variables, we focused the analyses on assessing whether the interest in big or small game species was different for women and men. We carried out Principal Component Analyses (PCA) with the 10 variables related to the interest in hunting each of the big game species and the 14 variables related to the interest in hunting small game species. We selected the principal components (PCs) with the eigenvalues greater than 1 according to the Kaiser–Guttman criterion. PCAs were conducted separately for big and small game species. However, to increase the percentage of the total variation in the dataset, PCAs were also performed by using only those species with the highest interest for women. We considered that women were highly interested in a species if the mean value of interest for this species was higher than 2.5. Here, we show the results for species with a high interest from women, but analyses were repeated with different thresholds and for all species. In all cases, the results did not change. The results using all the species in the PCA are shown in the Supplementary Material.
To determine whether the interest in big or small game species was different for women and men, we conducted lineal models with the extracted principal component scores as the response variable. Firstly, lineal models were separately performed for big and small game species with sex as the explanatory factor. Moreover, all data were jointly analyzed by using sex and hunting type (big vs. small game hunting) and the interaction of both as explanatory factors.
Statistical analyses were conducted with R package [64].

3. Results

Table 1 shows the female hunters’ interest in hunting each game species. For big game species, the surveyed female hunters gave higher average value for wild boar, red deer and roe deer. For small game species, they showed higher interest for red-legged partridge, rabbit and Iberian hare. Wild boar was the game species with the highest averaged interest value for women. Five big game species (wild boar, red deer, roe deer, fallow deer, and mouflon) and eight small game species (red legged-partridge, rabbit, Iberian hare, pigeons, common quail, thrushes, red fox, and turtle dove) had average interest values for women higher than 2.5. The variables related to the interest in these species were used to perform the PCA analyses.
All the variables related to the interest in hunting big game species or small game species were positively and significantly correlated (Tables S1 and S2). According to the Kaiser–Guttman criterion, we selected one principal component (PC1) for both big and small game species (Figure S1). PC1 for big game species explained 70.0% of the total variation. PC1 for small game species explained 50.7% of the total variation.
Women showed significantly higher interest than men in big game species ((A) in Table 2 and Figure 2; see also Table S3A and Figure S2). Contrarily, there were no significant differences in hunting small game species for women and men ((B) in Table 2 and Figure 2; see also Table S3B and Figure S2). When all data were jointly analyzed, sex, hunting type and the interaction of both had a significant effect ((C) in Table 2 and Figure 2; see also Table S3C and Figure S2). Therefore, women had higher interest than men in hunting big game species, and men tended to have more interest in hunting small game species.

4. Discussion

Our results show that Spaniard female hunters were more interested in hunting big game species than their male counterparts. If the increase in female participation in hunting continues in the future, our results might have implications for the sustainability of hunting and biodiversity conservation.
Firstly, it is known that women are more sensitive toward nature and the environment than men, as well as present eco-friendly attitudes in consumption [65,66,67]. Therefore, the increasing number of women in hunting might promote the positive impacts on biodiversity conservation. On the other hand, the type of hunting in which women were especially interested (big game hunting) can be more sustainable. The upward trend in female participation in hunting might increase big game harvesting for which populations are needed to be controlled [19,36]. The wild boar was the species for which female hunters had the greatest interest, and they were significantly more interested in hunting this species than their male counterparts. Wild boar is considered as an important threat for the preservation of natural communities [15,60,61,62], including public health [54] and road security [17,55]. Through the hunting of this predator, the control of small fauna hatchlings constitutes as an important factor of sustainability, favoring the maintenance of the activity and the conservation of biodiversity. In any case, wild boar mortality due to hunting might not be enough to reduce this threat, and it seems necessary to increase hunter recruitment and harvesting intensity [36,68]. In this way, the increase of female participation in hunting and their higher ability to recruit new hunters [45], as well as their greater interest in big game species, especially wild boar, is an important contribution to the sustainability of biodiversity and human activities, such as hunting.

Supplementary Materials

The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su15097439/s1, Table S1: Correlation matrix (Spearman method) for the variables related to the interest in hunting big game species; Table S2: Correlation matrix (Spearman method) for the variables related to the interest in hunting small game species; Figure S1: Number of PCs suggested by Kaiser-Guttman criterion; Table S3: Lineal models for the interest of women and men in hunting game species (PCA with all big game and small game species); Figure S2: Interest of women and men in hunting big game and small game species (PCA with all big game and small game species).

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.P-G., S.J.H.-d.-T. and J.I.R.G.; methodology, J.P-G., J.I.R.G., S.J.H.-d.-T. and C.S.-G.; formal analysis, J.P-G.; investigation, J.P-G., J.I.R.G., S.J.H.-d.-T. and C.S.-G.; resources, J.I.R.G., J.P-G., S.J.H.-d.-T. and C.S.-G.; data curation, J.P-G.; writing—original draft preparation, J.P.-G.; writing—review and editing, J.P-G., S.J.H.-d.-T., C.S.-G. and J.I.R.G.; supervision, J.I.R.G. and S.J.H.-d.-T.; project administration, J.I.R.G.; funding acquisition, J.I.R.G., S.J.H.-d.-T., J.P-G. and C.S.-G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by Fundación Artemisan.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Editorial Office of Sustainability and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous version of the manuscript. Fundación Artemisan coordinated the distribution of surveys among different associations, including the Spanish Hunters Federation (RFEC), whose members took part in this study.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. Number of hunting licenses for men and women in Spain since 2011 to 2021 [49].
Figure 1. Number of hunting licenses for men and women in Spain since 2011 to 2021 [49].
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Figure 2. Interest of women and men in hunting big game and small game species. The plot shows mean and standard errors. As interest values, we used the PC1 scores for the big game and small game species, in which women were more interested. See Figure S2.
Figure 2. Interest of women and men in hunting big game and small game species. The plot shows mean and standard errors. As interest values, we used the PC1 scores for the big game and small game species, in which women were more interested. See Figure S2.
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Table
Table 1. Interest of surveyed female hunters for each big game (BD) and small game (SG) species. Interest for each species is characterized by mean values and standard deviations (in brackets). Interests ranged between 0 (no interest) and 5 (very high interest). Species are ordered according to the average interest from highest to lowest (small game species in two columns). * Species with average interest higher than 2.5 (these species were used to extract the principal component scores for the following analyses).
Table 1. Interest of surveyed female hunters for each big game (BD) and small game (SG) species. Interest for each species is characterized by mean values and standard deviations (in brackets). Interests ranged between 0 (no interest) and 5 (very high interest). Species are ordered according to the average interest from highest to lowest (small game species in two columns). * Species with average interest higher than 2.5 (these species were used to extract the principal component scores for the following analyses).
Species (BG)InterestSpecies (SG)InterestSpecies (SG)Interest
Wild boar (Sus scrofa) *4.180 (1.399)Red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) *4.061 (1.478)Waterfowl1.963 (1.566)
Red deer (Cervus elaphus) *3.848 (1.586)Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) *3.625 (1.622)Magpie (Pica pica)1.729 (1.501)
Roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) *3.643 (1.693)Iberian hare (Lepus granatensis) *3.412 (1.655)Starling (Sturnus ssp.)1.646 (1.353)
Fallow deer (Dama dama) *3.085 (1.803)Pigeons (Columba ssp.) *3.262 (1.680)Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus)1.543 (1.284)
Mouflon (Ovis aries musimon) *2.817 (1.828)Common quail (Coturnix coturnix)3.113 (1.760)Others1.433 (1.724)
Iberian wild goat (Capra pyrenaica)2.491 (1.749)Thrushes (Turdus ssp.)3.085 (1.807)
Chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica)2.265 (1.683)Red fox (Vulpes vulpes)2.976 (1.846)
Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) 2.131 (1.658)Turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur)2.905 (1.756)
Iberian wolf (Canis lupus)1.814 (1.583)Woodcock (Scolopax rusticola)2.418 (1.827)
Balearian boc (Capra aegagrus)1.640 (1.381)Ring-necked pheasant (Phasianus colchicus)2.363 (1.757)
Table
Table 2. Lineal models for the interest of women and men in hunting game species. (A) Lineal model results with the extracted PC1 scores for the big game species, in which women were more interested as the response variable and sex as the explanatory factor. (B) Lineal model results with the extracted PC1 scores for the small game species, in which women were more interested as the response variable and sex as the explanatory factor. (C) Lineal model results with the extracted PC1 scores for the big game and small game species as the response variable, sex, hunting type (big vs. small game species) and the interaction of both as the explanatory factors. SE: standard error. Women as reference for sex factor. Big game hunting as reference for hunting type factor. See also Table S3. * Interaction.
Table 2. Lineal models for the interest of women and men in hunting game species. (A) Lineal model results with the extracted PC1 scores for the big game species, in which women were more interested as the response variable and sex as the explanatory factor. (B) Lineal model results with the extracted PC1 scores for the small game species, in which women were more interested as the response variable and sex as the explanatory factor. (C) Lineal model results with the extracted PC1 scores for the big game and small game species as the response variable, sex, hunting type (big vs. small game species) and the interaction of both as the explanatory factors. SE: standard error. Women as reference for sex factor. Big game hunting as reference for hunting type factor. See also Table S3. * Interaction.
FactorEstimateSEt Valuep
(A)
Big game hunting		Intercept0.5620.1025.502<0.001
Sex−0.7010.114−6.142<0.001
(B)
Small game hunting		Intercept−0.1480.111−1.3320.183
Sex0.1850.1241.4870.137
(C)
All
 
 
Intercept0.5620.1075.267<0.001
Sex−0.7010.119−5.879<0.001
Hunting type−0.7100.151−4.705<0.001
Sex * Hunting type0.8850.1695.252<0.001
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Pérez-González, J.; Hidalgo-de-Trucios, S.J.; Sánchez-García, C.; Rengifo Gallego, J.I. Women in the Hunt: A More Useful and Sustainable Hunt for Biodiversity? Sustainability 2023, 15, 7439. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097439

AMA Style

Pérez-González J, Hidalgo-de-Trucios SJ, Sánchez-García C, Rengifo Gallego JI. Women in the Hunt: A More Useful and Sustainable Hunt for Biodiversity? Sustainability. 2023; 15(9):7439. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097439

Chicago/Turabian Style

Pérez-González, Javier, Sebastián J. Hidalgo-de-Trucios, Carlos Sánchez-García, and Juan Ignacio Rengifo Gallego. 2023. "Women in the Hunt: A More Useful and Sustainable Hunt for Biodiversity?" Sustainability 15, no. 9: 7439. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097439

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