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Hunting and its impacts on wildlife are typically studied regionally, with a particular focus on the Global South. Hunting can, however, also undermine rewilding efforts or threaten wildlife in the Global North. Little is known about how hunting manifests under varying socioeconomic and ecological contexts across the Global South and North. Herein, we examined differences and commonalities in hunting characteristics across an exemplary Global South-North gradient approximated by the Human Development Index (HDI) using face-to-face interviews with 114 protected area (PA) managers in 25 African and European countries. Generally, we observed that hunting ranges from the illegal, economically motivated, and unsustainable hunting of herbivores in the South to the legal, socially and ecologically motivated hunting of ungulates within parks and the illegal hunting of mainly predators outside parks in the North. Commonalities across this Africa-Europe South-North gradient included increased conflict-related killings in human-dominated landscapes and decreased illegal hunting with beneficial community conditions, such as mutual trust resulting from community involvement in PA management. Nevertheless, local conditions cannot outweigh the strong effect of the HDI on unsustainable hunting. Our findings highlight regional challenges that require collaborative, integrative efforts in wildlife conservation across actors, while identified commonalities may outline universal mechanisms for achieving this goal.

1. Efforts to curb the unsustainable wildlife trade in tropical forests conceptualize bushmeat as a generic resource, exploited by a homogeneous group. However, bushmeat is composed of miscellaneous species differing in risks of zoonotic disease transmissions, sensitivity to hunting and abundance. If people choose these species for varying reasons, mitigation approaches that neglect specific drivers would likely target abundant species, e.g. rodents. Meanwhile, rare species of greater conservation relevance, like many primates, would be overlooked. Additionally, if reasons vary between user groups, their responsiveness to interventions may differ too. 2. We assessed this possibility for three common strategies to mitigate bushmeat use, which are: development‐based—reducing reliance on bushmeat; educational—increasing environmental and school education; and cultural—promoting environmentally friendly habits. 3. We interviewed 348 hunters, 202 traders and 985 consumers of bushmeat around Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, and tested if factors related to the above strategies affected selection for primates, duikers and rodents. 4. Our analyses revealed that people chose taxa for very different reasons. Users with shared characteristics favoured similar taxa; hunters economically reliant on bushmeat income targeted primates and duikers, while hunters and consumers nutritionally reliant on wildlife protein preferred rodents. Different groups used the same taxa for varying reasons. For example, hunting of primates was associated with economic needs, while their consumption appeared a matter of status. Meanwhile, cultural habits, like religion, specifically affected consumption and taboos inhibited the use of primates; environmental awareness was linked to lower utilization of most taxa within most user groups. 5. Our results demonstrate that educational‐, cultural‐, and development‐based strategies may address different needs and taxa. Consumers may presen

Development of reduction policies for products risking the health or the environment usually begins with the question of whether the most promising entry point is reducing production, distribution or consumption. We aim to answer this crucial question for bushmeat, a wildlife product whose unsustainable harvest threatens biodiversity and food security. We collected one of the largest data sets available on bushmeat commodity chains by interviewing 348 hunters, 202 bushmeat traders, 190 restaurant owners, and 985 consumers in 47 urban and rural settlements around Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire. We examined 1) structural traits by network analyses and 2) disentangled the underlying economic, cultural, and nutritional motives for bushmeat utilization at the level of production (hunters), distribution (bushmeat traders), and consumption (households). We found that while economic drivers determined hunting, trading was associated with economic and cultural drivers and consumption was purely influenced by cultural habits. Bushmeat traders were promising candidates for effective regulation interventions, but held a small market share and the risk of displacement to other trading channels remains. Since cultural motives for consumption provide a key opportunity for large-scale behavioral changes, we propose consumers as the most effective point of entry for interventions. However, any such consumer level intervention should be supported by programs providing the remaining commodity chain actors with alternative livelihoods. Generally, interventions into the complex social-ecological system of wildlife commodity chains must consider interdependencies and require multi-actor approaches and monitoring to avoid displacement and diffusion effects and to guarantee a socially and ecologically sustainable change., Development of reduction policies for products risking the health or the environment usually begins with the question of whether the most promising entry point is reducing production, distribution or consumption. We aim to answer this crucial question for bushmeat, a wildlife product whose unsustainable harvest threatens biodiversity and food security. We collected one of the largest data sets available on bushmeat commodity chains by interviewing 348 hunters, 202 bushmeat traders, 190 restaurant owners, and 985 consumers in 47 urban and rural settlements around Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire. We examined 1) structural traits by network analyses and 2) disentangled the underlying economic, cultural, and nutritional motives for bushmeat utilization at the level of production (hunters), distribution (bushmeat traders), and consumption (households). We found that while economic drivers determined hunting, trading was associated with economic and cultural drivers and consumption was purely influenced by cultural habits. Bushmeat traders were promising candidates for effective regulation interventions, but held a small market share and the risk of displacement to other trading channels remains. Since cultural motives for consumption provide a key opportunity for large-scale behavioral changes, we propose consumers as the most effective point of entry for interventions. However, any such consumer level intervention should be supported by programs providing the remaining commodity chain actors with alternative livelihoods. Generally, interventions into the complex social-ecological system of wildlife commodity chains must consider interdependencies and require multi-actor approaches and monitoring to avoid displacement and diffusion effects and to guarantee a socially and ecologically sustainable change.