Bush Meat Crisis is An ugly, painful and complicated problem that the media and most people refuse to acknowledge.
Bushmeat is a very painful topic for anyone who cares for wildlife. But it is important, and after careful consideration we decided to include this information on our website. Please note some of the photos below are horrific but reflect the reality confronting gorillas and other wildlife on a daily basis.
Bushmeat: The killing of animals, often endangered species such as gorillas, chimpanzees, monkeys, okapi, elephant, etc., for their meat, which is consumed as a delicacy and status symbol, NOT a needed source of protein.
For millennia man has hunted animals, taking only what he needed to survive and thus living in harmony with the natural cycles of life and death in Nature. Years ago, Native Americans hunted buffalo for their meat and pelts, taking what they needed, and giving thanks to God for providing the buffalo to help sustain them. People and buffalo co-existed as part of the Circle of Life.
Then the American West was opened up and more and more people moved into what had formerly been a wilderness. Railroads and highways were built and guns replaced bows and arrows making the killing of buffalo a commercial enterprise. Before too long, the American buffalo was almost extinct – wiped off the face of the earth by the greed and selfishness of a few people, who only cared about their own wealth and welfare, and not the future.
Today in Africa a similar commercialization of slaughter is going on, only this time, instead of a herd animal which has many babies in a lifetime, the victims are the African great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos), who only give birth every three to five years. The American buffalo was able to survive, but it’s unclear if the African great apes will be so lucky.
Virgin rainforests in Africa, home to rare, endangered animals like gorillas, chimpanzees, monkeys, okapi, duikers, etc., are being opened up with roads built by logging companies. Some African nations, anxious for the money hardwood from old growth rainforests can bring, allow foreign companies to come in and build roads into areas where animals once lived in peace, often never seeing humans before. Once into the forests, loggers chop down trees that are hundreds of years old to fill the demand for hardwood by many western nations, with the USA and Japan being some of the biggest customers.
Instead of bows and arrows, African hunters are now equipped with automatic weapons. Many laugh as trusting and gentle gorillas stand watching in curiosity before they have their heads blown off, by hunters who earn a premium for the meat of a dead gorilla or chimpanzee. Like the illegal drug trade, “bushmeat” pays very little to the actual supplier of the gruesome product, with more and more money being made as the “product” moves down the line to the ultimate customer, the burgeoning middle class in many African and European cities, who consider eating bushmeat a delicacy, like caviar.
Logging companies, perhaps unwittingly, play a large role in the bushmeat trade, since dead gorilla carcasses are brought from the bush into towns on the roads the logging companies build and in the logging trucks bringing the timber to ports. They are literally paving the way for the destruction of man’s closest relative: chimpanzees and gorillas.
Governments and logging companies both say they can’t stop the trade of bushmeat, which they claim is “cultural.” However, it’s not “cultural” to wipe out species at alarming rates, and African people are being insulted when the problem is reduced to such simplistic explanations.
Many people have been concerned about the escalation of the bushmeat trade for years, and the extreme damage it’s done. All the animals at the Limbe Wildlife Center are victims of the bushmeat trade. For each of the 7 gorillas who survived to make it to Limbe, it’s likely that up to 100 animals died. Often hunters kill the adults and take the babies to their logging camps to play with until the babies get sick and die or until they’re no longer amused by them.
thlokoincage.jpg (4261 bytes)thlokocutfromcage.jpg (3312 bytes)”Lucky” Loko arrived at the Limbe Wildlife Centre in December 1998. She was welded into this tiny cage, where she’d been for weeks, after being confiscated by authorities. Tony Chasar, one of Limbe’s American volunteers, cut her out of the cage, to discover her legs and muscles were so weakened by lack of use she could hardly walk or stand.
thlindaandloko.jpg (4908 bytes)I met Loko in May 1999 shortly after she came out of quarantine. Loko, here with Linda Percy, is a lovely little girl chimpanzee. She loves playing (her name means “to play” in a local dialect) with the other young chimpanzees in the Limbe chimp nursery group. After getting all the attention while in quarantine, Loko is learning to share with the others – with chimps, often a noisy lesson!
The biggest challenge is education. Limbe does a great job explaining why bushmeat isn’t good, suggesting raising rabbits and other herd animals as other sources of protein, since they reproduce faster and are not endangered. During one group’s visit to Limbe, someone asked how they could tell if they were buying a chimpanzee or gorilla when buying bushmeat, something people like to do for special occasions like Christmas or other holidays. Abel, a Limbe staff member, explained that bushmeat is often smoked and dried, cut into small bits while still in the bush to keep it fresh until it gets to a market, so the best way to avoid eating a chimp or a gorilla was to avoid ALL bushmeat! A good suggestion indeed!
No one’s children needs to eat bushmeat to survive or to get protein, as there are several other, more viable sources of protein to eat. Bushmeat is a luxury and like drugs, it’s a luxury that comes at an incredibly awful high price that the selfish consumer rarely considers.
It’s simplistic to blame the African who buys bushmeat as a treat for his family. Many believe the forests always held enough food for them and their families and do not realize the extent of the destruction going on. Once they learn this, they quickly understand the problem and many are spurred into doing something about it, by going home to tell their family and friends to stop buying bushmeat. If the end-user isn’t there, the slaughter could and would stop.
What can you do to help? Learn more about this topic from The Bushmeat Crisis.
My thanks to Karl Amman**, Jim Moore, Tony Rose, Shirley McGreal and the countless other brave people fighting to get the word out about bushmeat
