Richard Leakey

Category: Bonobos, Enforcement, Forests, Special guests, bushmeat | Date: Oct 22 2008 | By: richardleakey

Dr Paula Kahumbu interviewed Dr Terese Hart, a friend of Dr Richard Leakey, who has been on expedition in the forests around the Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba Rivers (TL2) in the Democratic Republic of Congo since May 2007 in search of bonobos. Paula asked her about her experience with the bushmeat trade in the Central African Rainforest.

Bringing home the bacon (picture (c) bonoboincongo.com)

1. In your opinion, what are the three greatest threats to forest wildlife in the Central African Rainforest?

The three threats that I think outweigh others are:

a.  bushmeat hunting

b.  ivory hunting

c.  loss of habitat

In the area where we are working, loss of habitat is not yet an issue, only hunting.   Habitat loss is associated with high human population and increasingly with logging and agricultural expansion. These have not yet reached the forested swath explored by our TL2 project of more than 60,000 sq. km running south-north through central D.R. Congo.  This forest area follows the Lomami watershed but reaches into the valleys of the Congo on the east and the upper Tshuapa on the west.  Through the entire area there is no road that can support even four-wheel drive vehicles.  Bushmeat hunting for distant markets has nevertheless become the main revenue source in isolated villages.  Trade in bushmeat is lucrative enough to bring buyers long distances to these outposts.  The wild meat they buy is smoked and dried.  The profit they gain is from markets hundreds of km distant to which they send their meat by foot, bicycle, and dugout.

2. How serious are these threats – are any species in danger of extinction? 

Yes, there is an increasing danger.  Where snare trapping is used, bushmeat hunting empties these forests of antelope, pig, okapi and buffalo.  Where shotguns are used, the primates are principal targets.  Frequently both methods are used. Were the abundance of these animals to be mapped, large halos of empty forest would become visible around market centers such as Kisangani, Ikela, Lomela and Kindu.  These rings of silence are growing.  When the areas of local extinction coalesce, the process becomes difficult if not impossible to reverse.  In the TL2 area, bonobos are endangered.  In the east, Grauer’s gorillas are endangered. Both are endemic to D.R. Congo.

Elephant hunting occurs separately from bushmeat commerce.   Forest elephants have been decimated with military arms, mainly AK 47s that became abundant in D.R. Congo during the war period of the 1990s and early 2000s.  Ivory hunting has occurred in waves.  The result is that thousands of elephants were slaughtered in the Lomami watershed alone.  Their remains are piles of large slow-decaying bones scattered throughout the forest.  The living population is concentrated around a single tributary of the Lomami midway between the major export markets of Kindu and Kisangani.  Similar Elephant decimation happened during the war period in all Congo’s major wilderness forests: the Ituri, Maiko, Uele, ….

3. How much bushmeat is being harvested from these forests annually (can you estimate the gross amount, number of animals and number of species?)

We cannot now make an estimate but should have good evaluations of offtake from a number of areas next year.  At this point our information is from measures of hunting effort rather than hunting success and bushmeat transport to market.  It is important to point out, however, that all areas with consistent hunting for the bushmeat trade have decreasing, often rapidly decreasing,  populations of wild animals.

In interviews with villagers it is clear that areas around even the smallest settlements have been largely hunted out.  In villages more than 200 km south of Opala (remote!) people are  already saying that the animals are no longer close to the village.  They must walk several days into the forest to  hunt successfully.   There is no forest so remote in Central Africa that it has not been subject to at least some bushmeat hunting.

4. Could bushmeat harvesting be conducted on a sustainable basis?  Why? 

Some species would survive continuous hunting but only with enforced regulation (hunting seasons, no – hunting areas, tax on bushmeat transport and sale) before commercial hunting can exist in a “sustainable” manner. Sustainable here means without local extinction.  Regulation does of course have to accept a certain level of depletion.   If hunting regulation is too difficult to enforce then the best single option is to create a no-hunting zone or protected area.  This has rather simple and absolute restrictions but would best be policed in collaboration with local people.

Controlling the people who actually profit most from the bushmeat trade will be difficult. The profit is minimal for the villagers who are the hunters that actually kill the animals, butcher and dry the carcasses.  The real profit is at the next level up, the buyers.  They buy for little and resell at a large mark up.  They have no attachment to the forest.  The result is that the forests are emptied with no improvement in local living conditions.  Villages that have long depended on hunting for protein in their own diets are left impoverished.  Bushmeat hunting has become a large industry in the wake of Congo’s war and in response to the concomitant loss of jobs.   However this form of commerce is mining a temporary resource and will bring only a transitory source of wealth to a middle-income group while impoverishing the poorest.  The result is food insecurity for those rural communities most dependent on hunting.

5. What do you think would be the most appropriate way to manage human need for protein and still assure conservation of wild species?

There needs to be large scale animal husbandry and pisciculture projects close to all centers of population.  Domestic meat needs to cost significantly less than bushmeat, which is not now the case.   In Kindu beef sells for 4000 to 4500 FC the kilo (about 8.5 dollars/kg).   A dried monkey sells for significantly less per kilo. A dried bonobo is only 50$.

There needs to be a variety of domestic meats:  pork, beef, chicken, and possibly other small animals such as rabbit.  The domestic meat industry, particularly beef, was seriously compromised by the war and it still has not recovered.

Urban people will move away from bushmeat as a subsistence item if it begins to cost significantly more than domestic meat.  Bushmeat may still be a prized food item, but levels of demand will decrease.

Follow Dr Hart’s expedition here

Tags: Africa, animals, bonobo, bushmeat, central Africa, DRC, extinction, Forests, hunting, Kisangani, Lomami, Lualaba, richard leakey, trade, Tshuapa, wildlife

5 responses so far

Category: Enforcement, Forests, Gorillas, bushmeat | Date: Sep 19 2008 | By: richardleakey

I am incredulous that the Centre of International Forestry Research (CIFOR) would suggest bushmeat hunting be legalized, giving the local people the task of policing themselves. This position shows remarkable naïveté and totally fails to understand the realities on the ground. A hungry population is never going to practice conservation of food, especially where it can be had free from the forest.

CIFOR argues that since up to 80% of the rural households in central and western Africa already depend on bushmeat for their daily protein requirements then a blanket ban on the trade would endanger both humans and wildlife. They call for regulated but legal uptake of wildlife protein. Maybe, but just how can this be done?

There are no mechanisms to regulate this even with the best legislation. Past experience with forest products, poppies, ivory and charcoal are all legitimate examples of failures of communities to police themselves.

Commercial bushmeat hunting has become the most significant immediate threat to the future of wildlife in Africa and around the world. It has already resulted in widespread local extinctions in Asia and Africa. Elephant, gorilla, chimpanzee and other primates have already been wiped out of several regions. Smaller animals such as duikers, porcupine, bush pig, pangolin, monitor lizard and guinea fowl are rapidly becoming locally extinct in these regions. Legalizing this multi-billion trade will not help the wildlife. It will instead exterminate what remains, species that we are working so hard to preserve.

For instance, there are only 300 Cross River Gorillas left in the world. They are found only in Cameroun and Nigeria. If we give poachers the right to hunt these gorillas, it will take them a very short time to wipe out the entire population. Dr Anthony L. Rose, together with investigative wildlife photographer, Karl Ammann have carried out research in West Africa and estimate that in one year poachers will harvest US$2-billion worth of wildlife from the great ape regions. Part of this haul will include 8,000 endangered great apes. If the slaughter continues at this pace, then the remaining wild apes in Africa will be gone within as little as fifteen years.

This threat to wildlife is indeed a crisis because it is rapidly expanding to countries and species which were previously not at risk, largely due to an increase in commercial logging, with an infrastructure of roads and trucks that links forests and hunters to cities and consumers. The argument is that these people are poor and need both the protein and the income.
I do not personally dispute the tragedy of the poor but allowing them to hunt and encouraging a process that will result in exploitation of wildlife will not alleviate their poverty. Why don’t people encourage the rearing of chickens, fish or cane rats to alleviate their protein deficiency? This will bring development and a better and healthier existence.

If I should continue to use the example of primates, there is evidence that conserving primates, rather than eating them, will actually enhance food availability for humans. African scientist operating in the Taï region of Côte-d’Ivoire, for instance, found that seven species of monkeys used about 75 species of plants as a source of fruit, of which 25 were also used by local human inhabitants for various purposes. Now, monkeys are well known seed dispersal agents and they will spread the seeds of these plants that are important to humans. If there are no monkeys, then the chance of survival of such food plants is reduced.

There is a good reason to believe that some very dangerous diseases are haboured in wild animals and eating such animal – or handling them as you would handle food – could provoke new and terrible epidemics among these communities and at the global arena. We have all heard of at least one or more of these diseases: Ebola fever, Hantavirus disease, Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and other diseases noted for their high human fatality per case rates. These and other diseases of wildlife pose increasing challenges for the health of humans already. Do we want to further complicate this problem?

I know that many people are poor and that is why I put forward this question: should we allow people to steal on a sustainable basis, taking a little from the bank on a daily basis as well as robbing everyone of the money they have worked hard for? This will not resolve poverty, nor will allowing people to take protein from the wild as is being proposed in the CIFOR report.

I don’t see any sensible person calling for the legalization of narcotics just because it is the poor who grow poppies and other raw materials. Instead, more resources are being allocated to fight this vice and to educate the public.

I totally disagree with the recommendation of legalizing bushmeat and believe that alternatives for food production and poverty alleviation exist and should be explored.

Tags: Africa, bushmeat, CIFOR, extinction, Forests, hunting, IUCN, Karl Ammann, richard leakey, west Africa, wildlife

15 responses so far