Many of the world’s wild mammals, from primates to bats, are being hunted to extinction for bushmeat, says The Guardian. In the first global report on the ecological impact of human hunting, researchers warn that without better management practices not only will species disappear, but hundreds of millions of rural people who rely on bushmeat for food could go hungry.
“There are a plenty of bad things affecting wildlife around the world and habitat loss and degradation are clearly at the forefront, but among the other things is the seemingly colossal impact of bushmeat hunting,” says University of Oxford Professor David Macdonald, who is part of the international team that published the report in the journal Royal Society Open Science. “You might rejoice at having some habitat remaining, say a pristine forest, but if it is hunted out to become an empty larder, it is a pyrrhic victory.”
“The scale of the global bushmeat trade is difficult to measure but, in 2011, the Center for International Forestry Research estimated 6m tonnes of animals were taken each year,” says The Guardian. “The meat is also smuggled abroad, with 260 tonnes of wild meat per year estimated to be hidden in personal baggage at just one European airport, Paris Charles de Gaulle.”
Explaining why the problem is getting worse, MacDonald says, “The number of hunters involved has gone up, and the penetration of road networks into the remotest places is such that there is no refuge left. So it becomes commercially possible to make a trade out of something that was once just a rabbit for the pot. In places like Cameroon, where I have worked, you see flotillas of taxis early in the morning going out to very remote areas and being loaded up with the [bushmeat] catch and taken back to towns.”