Species on the Brink
|
Archived Articles
Species on the Brink
Resources at Risk
Good News
Get Outdoors |
Wildlife by the Ton: The African Bushmeat Trade NAIROBI, Kenya, February 25, 2002 (ENS) - Next time you go to a restaurant in Africa and a dish featuring a wild animal is on the menu, think before you eat, says Douglas Williamson, a wildlife expert with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The animal on your plate is likely the victim of commercial hunters, who are taking the wild animals normally eaten by African communities to sell in the cities, and in the process robbing the world of irreplaceable biodiversity. When wild forest animals are killed for food, they become a commodity - bushmeat. Thousands of species, from insects, rodents and birds, to buffalo, elephants, and impalas, are utilized as bush meat, says a 2000 report issued by the wildlife trade monitoring organization TRAFFIC.
The findings of TRAFFIC's two year study in eastern and southern Africa, sponsored by the European Commission, are still current. "Along with habitat loss, the commercial bushmeat trade is probably the biggest threat to wildlife in Africa," Williamson confirms. "Rural communities depend on bushmeat because domestic meat is too expensive," says Williamson. "But the growing commercial market in the cities is driving the trade - and this urban fashion for bushmeat feeds off rural poverty. Basically a rich man hands out guns and a few pennies to the locals, and then goes back to the city with a fortune in meat." The use of wildlife for food is one of the main contributing factors to the recorded declines in many animal species. Africa's paradox is that the continent contains both the world's highest levels of food insecurity and some of its richest and most vulnerable biodiversity. TRAFFIC East and Southern Africa senior program officer and author of the report, Rob Barnett, said, "Hunting is moving into protected areas, where bush meat harvest is now the number one illegal activity." "Even smaller species are being targeted as a result of declining populations of larger game. With declining populations of more popular species such as buffalo," said Barnett, "hunters have now turned their attention to once taboo and totem species such as zebra and hippo." People pay high prices to eat more great apes each year than are now kept in all the zoos and laboratories of the world, according to the Bushmeat Project, a California based anti-bushmeat advocacy group. Heart-rending photographs of dead gorillas publicized by the Bushmeat Project have dramatized the bushmeat situation in West Africa, where forests already depleted by logging contain fewer species of larger mammals than do savannah regions. But wildlife across the continent is under the gun.
"The death of what conservationists call 'charismatic' animals attracts publicity," says Williamson. "But increasing demand for bushmeat and declining wildlife populations mean that smaller species are targeted as well." Other forest products and activities that generate revenue are also threatened by the booming and illegal bushmeat trade. These include animal parts used for medicinal and ritual purposes, photographic safaris and trophy hunting - the backbone of East and Southern Africa's multimillion dollar tourism industry. Wild animals have important ecological roles in forest ecosystems - some tree seeds, for example, will not germinate unless they pass through the digestive tract of elephants. Therefore, the extinction of indigenous species can change ecosystems in unpredictable ways. Increasing appetite for bushmeat coupled with decreasing numbers of wild animals means that bushmeat hunting is now unsustainable hunting. "Peak hunting periods coincide with the dry season when vegetation is less dense, which makes the hunting easier," explains Williamson. "In one incident in Mozambique, commercial hunters shot more in one night than the whole village ate in a year. But the commercial hunters don't care - they don't live there." Many developing countries lack capacity to collect taxes or enforce hunting regulations, and bribery of poorly paid local and national officials is a problem. "Traditional community wildlife management mechanisms have been replaced by state responsibility," Williamson says. "So nobody feels they own the forest, and wildlife is considered fair game to the person who gets there first or can pay the biggest bribe." TRAFFIC urges integrated action that takes into consideration both wildlife conservation and food security. The organization recommends that wildlife ownership be transferred to landholders and local communities, and land tenure be secured and formalized in legislation.
"This would prompt an interest among local communities, landowners and holders to invest in the sustainable management of the wildlife resource for meat production," Barnett explained. "Once benefits increase to landholders, wildlife can play an important sustainable role in community development and, by doing so, ensure its continued survival." Anthony Rose, director of the Bushmeat Project, says, "A ragged farflung army of 2,000 bushmeat hunters supported by the timber industry infrastructure will illegally shoot and butcher over 3,000 gorillas and 4,000 chimpanzees this year. That's five times the number of gorillas on Rwanda's Mt. Visoke and 20 times more chimpanzees than live near Tanzania's Gombe Stream." Reliable statistics on the bushmeat trade are hard to find because it is usually illegal, and reports are informal or misleading. But an FAO report written in 1997 cites figures of over 1.2 million metric tons of bushmeat - excluding elephants - harvested in one month in Nigeria. At the same time, the formalized legal production of game meat through game ranching and cropping is a growing activity with potential for increased wildlife management and poverty alleviation, the TRAFFIC researchers found. To improve conditions for wildlife survival, "conservation interests and food security interests must work together to balance food needs with long term wildlife management," Barnett stressed. "We are arriving at a critical situation where there may soon be few large mammals left on private land." Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
Man in Mozambique displays meat of the
dik-dik, the world's smallest antelope. (Photo
courtesy IUCN Mozambique)
Gorillas shot for bushmeat (Photo courtesy 
Guns seized from poachers at the Zambia
Wildlife Authority headquarters in Chilanga Photo by
Rob Barnett courtesy 