Human-Wildlife interactions in a tropical forest context: modeling, analysis and simulations

Abstract

Anthropisation and excessive hunting in tropical forests threaten biodiversity, ecosystem maintenance and human food security. In this article, we focus on the issue of coexistence between humans and wildlife in an anthropised environment. Assuming that the human population moves between its residential area and the surrounding forest to hunt, we study a resource-consumer model with consumer migration. A comprehensive analysis of the system is carried out using classical theory and monotone systems theory. We show that the possibilities for long-term coexistence between human populations and wildlife populations are determined by hunting rate thresholds. Depending on the level of anthropisation and the hunting rate, the system may converge towards a limit cycle or a co-existence equilibrium. However, the conditions for coexistence become more difficult as anthropisation increases. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the theoretical results.