CENTRAL AFRICA: Bushmeat crisis threatens wildlife, poor households

NAIROBI, 12 September (IRIN) - A new study in central Africa suggests that the onslaught on wild game, for what is generally known as bushmeat, threatens wildlife and poor households that depend on it as a source of food and cash income, the Zoological Society of London reported on Wednesday.

The society's research results suggest that the current situation is even more serious than previously thought.

"Bushmeat can be a very emotive issue, and some of the pictures that come out of the bushmeat markets can be quite horrifying to western eyes, but the important thing to remember is that people who are hunting and eating bushmeat generally do not have any other options," Dr Guy Cowlishaw, a research fellow at the society, said.

"It would be a crisis if the bushmeat resource disappeared. We have a duty to make sure it remains for local people and is sustainable for the future of the species affected by it," he added.

The society said that the scale and severity of demand for wild game meat was perhaps most devastating in tropical Africa, where the unsustainable hunting of animals had led to a "bushmeat crisis" that threatened a myriad of species with extinction - including humankind's closest relatives, the great apes: gorillas and chimpanzees.

"The hunting of vulnerable species and the illegal hunting of all species in protected areas must be stopped," the society said.

It added that it was working to achieve this goal through a variety of activities, including a gorilla ecotourism project at Lope National Park in Gabon and through law-enforcement monitoring at five national parks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The society said its strategy combined species protection and sustainable use approaches in a mixture that balanced conservation and development needs. It said its scientists had recently developed a computer model of a "virtual bushmeat hunting system", which was being used to develop the best management policies to ensure that the legal trade in bushmeat was sustainable.

Using this multifaceted approach, the society said it had two goals: to protect species from extinction and to protect poor households from losing a crucial resource.

[ENDS]

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