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This study tests the idea that indigenous hunters employ selective prey and patch choice to augment the sustainability of their long-term foraging returns. In other words, do Achuar (Shiwiar) hunting patterns maintain the group's "harmony" or "balance with nature" behaving as conservationists, or do they act as resource maximizers acting in ways predicted by optimal foraging theory? Analysis of indigenous hunters' prey choice in light of patch selection and optimal diet breadth models indicate that the Achuar (with few exceptions) are overharvesting local populations of various species of Neotropical wildlife. Significantly, this research documents differential species vulnerability to indigenous hunting pressure which, in turn, affects the sustainability of Amazonian wildlife harvests. Additionally, this research illustrates how a relatively isolated egalitarian and autonomous Amerindian group of subsistence hunter–horticulturalists, who maintain many of the traditional beliefs about wildlife population dynamics, are fully capable of overhunting several species of Neotropical wildlife. As such, the overharvesting of various types of wild game by the Achuar cannot be considered as being an artifact of Western contact. Lastly, this work examines some of the ethical issues raised by these findings.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-1065-2_13

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