THE survival of Africa鈥檚 great apes is being threatened by a growing
worldwide demand for bushmeat, researchers at the CITES meeting are claiming.
Animals ranging from rodents to elephants and apes are being hunted for their
flesh, which is then sold around the world. The British delegation called for
tougher action to protect primates, in particular, from being hunted for their
meat. But the meeting decided simply to set up a working group to look for
solutions to the bushmeat crisis.
The conference corridors echoed with reports of primate carcasses being
transported by the boatload, and cross-border bicycle convoys carrying smoked
elephant meat destined for supermarkets in Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Gruesome
images of dismembered great apes on sale in up-country African markets were on
display
More than a million tonnes of meat caught in the wild is eaten in equatorial
Africa each year, says Ian Redmond of the Ape Alliance, based in Britain.
Bushmeat has long been consumed locally in rural areas, but increasingly hunters
are killing to supply big cities and foreign countries, or to feed workers in
forest logging camps.
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According to Karl Ammann, a Kenyan-based investigator, forest elephants are
now more likely to be killed for their flesh than their ivory, and the meat can
sell for $5 a kilogram. Chimpanzee and gorilla meat often fetches more
than beef and chicken. And according to Heather Eves of the US-based Bushmeat
Crisis Task Force, wildlife populations in tropical forests regenerate much more
slowly than animals of the savannah grasslands of east and southern Africa.
The trade in wildlife meat is global. Iguanas are served on
dinner tables in Nicaragua, snakes from Borneo are shipped to Hong Kong
restaurants, and West African snails are sold in London street markets. Under
CITES rules much of the trade is already illegal, though hunting for local
consumption is allowed. 鈥淭here is a large difference between commercial trade
and that for subsistence,鈥� says Eves.
But David Brown of the British government鈥檚 delegation says that is too
simple. Bushmeat is 鈥渁 major component of the economics of much of equatorial
Africa鈥�, he says. 鈥淚t is a primary source of animal protein and the main export
commodity for the inhabitants.鈥� Brown says the industry should be 鈥渕anaged, not
stigmatised and criminalised鈥�. As an interim measure, CITES called on logging
companies to feed their workers from outside rather than asking them to plunder
food from the forests.
