 under the pressures of agricultural and human expansion. Without efforts to preserve their habitats it will be difficult for these species to survive.
Developing Wildlife Resources
Governments cannot stop hungry people from hunting game, but they can use this impetus to help protect some indigenous animals as well as forest and woodland habitats. Fostering the production and supply of wild animals such as those described in this book could open up a new: source of meat and other products, particularly for subsistence farmers in remote areas. In the last analysis, this may be the only way of protecting and maintaining these animals and developing local awareness of their value.
International economic development organizations have traditionally shown little interest in wildlife or wildlife habitats. Yet maintaining these animals and their habitats is crucial to the continuing supply of many indigenous food animals, the most important of which are often the smaller ones that flourish in secondary growth. And the forests that support wildlife also protect some of the huge investments that AID, the World Bank, and other other agencies have made to help developing countries. The forest is the sponge that absorbs the water from tropical rains. Without trees covering the watersheds, heavy rains cause rushing water that erodes the land, despoils highways, silts up dams and reservoirs, knocks out bridges, and inundates towns, villages, and farm fields.
In principle, the farming of tropical wildlife could become a force in preventing clear-felling of the tropical forests. Rational utilization of tropical animals offers productive alternative use of the land. In some cases, the farming of indigenous animals can fit smoothly into tropical habitats and into traditional village life, because the livestock and its needs are usually familiar to local people and are often ingrained in their traditions.( For successful examples see companion reports nos. 44 and 45, Butterfly Farming in Papua New Guinea and Crocodiles as a Resource for the Tropics.
Hybridization may offer new prospects for using underexploited tropical animal resources. This is a speculative notion, but it deserves serious attention.
Crossbreeding between the animals mentioned in this report holds exciting possibilities for expanding livestock options in the tropics. Some of the crosses, known or envisaged, are:
· gaur x cattle
· banteng x cattle
· kouprey x cattle
· yak x cattle
· yak x banteng
· anoa x water buffalo
· tamaraw x water buffalo
· domestic pig x warty pigs
· warty pigs x bearded pig
Care must be taken, however, to guard against the dilution of wild genes by the escape of hybrid or interbreeding domestic species, or the establishment of feral hybrid populations.
International Exchange of Pig Germ Plasm
Present veterinary restrictions effectively prevent the movement of pigs between most countries. Relatively few species of wild pigs are therefore maintained in zoos outside their countries of origin. This stifles the promising potential for the species described in Part III, as well as for captive-breeding safeguards and research on the endangered species. It is important that attempts be made to identify channels for the future establishment of viable captive stocks both within Asia and elsewhere. Transfer of embryos should be verified as a means of permitting disease-free movement across frontiers.
Species Not Covered in this Report
This project, which began as a short report on banteng, quickly developed momentum as it brought in suggestion after suggestion of further species. Through pressures of time and budget, it was not possible to take up all of these interesting animals. Some of the omitted ones are listed below.
Takin (Budorcas taxicolor).* A heavily built, Southeast Asian hoofed mammal of the family Bovidae, the takin lives in small herds in the mountains, often above timberline. Though robust and short-legged, it can move about quickly and easily over difficult slopes. It stands up to about 1 m at the shoulder and has a shaggy yellowish- to black