ENVIRONMENT-AFRICA: Increasing Poverty Fuels Bush Meat Market

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Aug 2 2000 (IPS) - Expanding human populations and declining incomes in rural areas are feeding a booming market in bush meat in Eastern and Southern Africa, according to a new report released here Tuesday by two major international environmental groups.

Starved of more-expensive sources of protein, growing numbers of people in rural areas are hunting and consuming bush meat, which includes everything from insects to big mammals, such as buffalo, elephants, and impalas, according to the report issued by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring arm of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

And the growing scarcity of some of the bigger animals is resulting in hunters targeting once-taboo and totem species, such as zebra and hippo, according to the report, which is based on 23 recent surveys of the bush meat trade in seven countries.

“We are arriving at a critical juncture where there may soon be few large mammals left to hunt,” says Ginette Hemley, who heads the WWF’s Species Conservation.

Smaller species, which generally have been shunned by African hunters are also being targeted. “In the past, eating rodents and reptiles was never contemplated by many peoples, but now these species constitute an important component of the bush meat diet in numerous areas,” said the report, which was sponsored by the European Commission.

Worse, increased competition for the diminishing resource is leading to more sophisticated, but less discriminating, hunting technology, including semi-automatic weapons, that are inherently unsustainable.

As a result, the demand for bush meat in Africa has become “one of the greatest causes of the decline of wild animal populations” there, according to the report, which calls for transferring wildlife ownership from national governments, which appear incapable of protecting the animals, to local communities and landowners with an interest in their continued survival.

“This would prompt an interest among local communities, landowners and holders to invest in the sustainable management of the wildlife resource for meat production,” according to Simon Habel, who directs TRAFFIC-North America.

As a threat to the region’s environment, the hunting and consumption of bush meat has drawn relatively little attention until quite recently. Instead, much of the concern was directed at the hunting of officially endangered species, especially tigers, rhinos, and gorillas, as trophies or for specific body parts used in traditional Chinese medicines.

The assumption has been that both commercial big-game hunting, mostly by Western tourists, and traditional hunting of mostly small mammals by local subsistence hunters were continuing as in the past and remained sustainable over large parts of the continent.

Last April, however, the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) published a ground-breaking report, ‘Bushmeat: Africa’s Conservation Crisis’, which detailed the growing threat to wildlife posed by increased logging and other extractive industries that bring large numbers of workers into previously sparsely populated regions, particularly in West and Central Africa.

Such activities, often financed by Western companies, greatly increase demand for bush meat, impoverishing indigenous communities which depend on small amounts of wildlife meat for subsistence.

The new report offers far more detail about the bush meat trade outside the tropical forests of West and Central Africa. Countries covered in the report include Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In these countries, “hunting is moving into protected areas, where bush meat harvest is now the number one illegal activity,” according to Rob Barnett, the principal author of the report. “Even smaller species are being targeted as a result of declining populations of larger game.”

Moreover, “what was once subsistence use of these species is also becoming a much more commercialised trade,” he says.

In six of the seven countries surveyed, bush meat was found to be much cheaper than domestic meat. In Zimbabwe, for example, it was 75 percent cheaper than domestic meat. As a result, poorer households have grown much more reliant on bush meat which in many cases is their only affordable source of protein.

It is also a vital source of income in many communities in the region, according to Barnett. “In the western Serengeti of Tanzania, for example, more than a third of traders rely on bush meat as their sole source of income,” he says.

“It is believed to involve more people and to have a greater effect on wild animal populations, including those in protected areas, than any other wildlife activity,” according to the report.

At the same time, policy-makers must understand the importance of bush meat as a source of nutrition for the growing numbers of people who live in the region which suffers some of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.

“The meat from wild animals is crucial, not only in providing cheap protein to generally malnourished people, but also through trade in generating cash incomes where few alternative sources of income exist,” according to the report.

“Without the bush meat contribution to local economies and family stew pots, it can be expected that the standards of living of a large number of people will decrease even further,” it concludes.