Background: Wildlife has been traditionally used by forest communities as a source of protein, and the Peruvian Amazon is no exception. The articulation of colonist and indigenous communities to urban centers and markets results in changes in livelihood strategies and impacts on wildlife populations. To address the threat of overhunting and forest conversion, we provide a generalized characterization of colonist and indigenous communities and their hunting activities near Pucallpa, Ucayali, Peru. Methods: A semi-structured household survey was conducted to characterize hunters and describe their prey collections. The data were analyzed by conducting a Kruskal-Wallis test, a multiple regression analysis, and by estimating the harvest rate (H). Results: Less wealthy households were more actively engaged in hunting for food security and as a livelihood strategy. Additionally, older hunters ...

The spatial patterns of deforestation are usually non-randomly distributed across the landscape. While anthropogenically driven processes are often addressed in land-use regulation policies and deforestation research, less attention is given to the environmental factors that influence tropical deforestation. This study investigates to what extent climate conditions (temperature and precipitation) and biophysical landscape characteristics (elevation, slope, soil type, forest type, and distance to rivers) facilitate or mitigate deforestation processes in Peru's tropical Andes. A Random Forest regression model was constructed for the entire Peruvian tropical Andes, and separate models were developed for some of the known direct deforestation drivers in the region (coca production, gold mining, and land-use by indigenous and non-indigenous communities). Soil type and precipitation were ident...