The demand for wild meat in tropical Africa threatens species like chimpanzees and gorillas with extinction. Recent research reveals the scale of the trade and the possibility that it could be made sustainable.
Some 60 per cent of the mammals in the bush meat harvest are hunted in an unsustainable manner, says Dr Guy Cowlishaw. The trade threatens both the hunted and the hunters. Loss of bush meat would be disastrous for households already struggling to survive, he said yesterday.
Bush meat is widely sold and eaten all over West and Central Africa. Between one and five million tonnes are extracted each year from the Congo basin alone, says Dr Cowlishaw of the Zoological Society of London. The value of the trade in Africa is $20-$200 million per country per year.
"The bush meat trade can be very emotive. Some pictures are quite horrible to Western eyes. But people doing it have no options," says Dr Cowlishaw.
"It represents one of the few economic opportunities in collapsing economies," says Dr Glyn Davies, director of conservation programmes at the Zoological Society.
There is a long tradition of bush meat hunting in Africa, but a suite of things have converged to create the current crisis, says Dr Cowlishaw. Human populations are growing and habitat is being lost - so there is increasing demand and decreasing supply.
With the deteriorating political situation in many countries, domestic meat provision and veterinary support "is not the best, and hence there is more pressure on the wild", says Dr Davies.
In a survey of 121 households in north-eastern Congo, all of which live on less than one dollar per capita per day, bush meat makes up only a small part of the diet. But the sale of bush meat accounts for one-quarter of all income, says Dr Cowlishaw.
In urban areas, bush meat is a luxury food, he says. Poorer families live on meats from domestic animals and fish.
In an urban market in Takoradi, Ghana's third-largest city, 16 different species of wild animal are being traded, says Dr Cowlishaw. However, the species involved are mainly rodents and small antelope, which have high reproductive rates and can sustain a high level of harvest. Species with low reproductive rates, such as primates, giant hog and African Buffalo, are missing, a result of historical unsustainable depletion, says Dr Cowlishaw.
Can the needs and livelihoods of people in Africa be taken care of while achieving conservation goals? "We are trying to focus hunting activity on those species that can be sustainably harvested," he says. Cane rats, for example, are crop pests with a high reproductive rate and they are a popular meat, he says.
The research group is using a computer program to study the complex factors involved in the trade. This shows that while heavy hunting can be disastrous, light hunting can be sustainable, Dr Cowlishaw says.
Sustainable development and conservation must work together, Mr Davies said. "We don't want poor people to become even poorer," he added.
