Wildlife of Lao PDR: 1999 Status Report - IUCN

4, 5, 6). Catapults are used primarily by children to take squirrels,
lizards, birds and other small game around villages. A
variety of nets is used to catch birds and bats, and individuals
may be hit out of dense flocks with long bamboo poles.
Home-made muskets are in widespread use. Automatic and
semi-automatic weapons, many left over from the last
Indochina war but distributed also to village defence forces,
are widely used for hunting. Poisons and explosives are sometimes
used in fishing and hidden in bait for carnivorous mammals
(e.g. otters and big cats). Night hunting with powerful
spotlights is apparently relatively new, but is rapidly spreading
and is used in hunting everything from frogs to large
mammals.
Across the country, as in neighbouring lands, trees may
be felled to remove pangolins, lorises, monitors and other
wildlife. Trees with promising-looking crevices may even
be felled speculatively. Whether this activity is having, or
will have, limiting effects on the numbers of holes available
for cavity-dwelling species is unclear, but it is a very wasteful
form of exploitation. Akin to this is the felling of trees to
Table 1. Relative frequency of wildlife species used as food in rural Lao PDR.
Introduction
allow easy gathering of fruit. Whether this is yet reducing
food supplies for frugivorous wildlife is unclear. Few forest
trees regenerate from cut stumps (T. C. Whitmore verbally
1999) and if these felling practices continue, resource levels
for wildlife may be reduced.
Subsistence Hunting
The precise role of wild animals in local diet is still under
investigation, but it is clear that most animal protein consumed
in rural households comes from captured wildlife (including
fish and invertebrates), not from domestic animals.
In one study in Salavan Province, the respective balance was
82% to 18% (K. Clendon per J. Foppes in litt. 1999). Wildlife
is, in general, relatively more significant in more remote
areas (J. Foppes and R. Dechaineux verbally 1999). Hunting,
fishing and gathering are important in most or all village
economies in Lao PDR (e.g. Chazee 1990, Hirsch 1991,
Ireson 1991, Tayanin and Lindell 1991, Oveson 1993, Foppes
and Kethpanh 1997). Many data are being accumulated by
the ongoing IUCN Non-Timber Forest Products Project, a
Species Percent of villages reporting species as:
Muntjacs 61.2 75.3
Wild pigs 59.3 5.6
Sambar 27.8 11.6
Squirrels 24.6