Home > Highlights > New Report Says Blanket Ban on Bushmeat Trade in Central Africa Could Have Dire Consequences for the Region’s Poor

New Report Says Blanket Ban on Bushmeat Trade in Central Africa Could Have Dire Consequences for the Region’s Poor

“If local people are guaranteed the benefits of sustainable land use and hunting practices, they will be willing to invest in sound management and negotiate selective hunting regimes,” said Frances Seymour, Director General of CIFOR.

Researchers Warn That Some Central African Wildlife Species Will Become Extinct Within 50 Years Unless “Bushmeat” Hunting is Controlled & Local Land Use Rights Recognized

YAOUNDE (16 September 2008) – A new report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) and partners warns that an upsurge in hunting bushmeat—including mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians — in tropical forests is unsustainable and that it poses serious threats to food security for poor inhabitants of forests in Africa, who rely largely on bushmeat for protein.

The authors of the report call on policymakers in the region to develop policies protecting endangered species, while allowing sustainable hunting of “common” game, since there is no clear substitute available if common wild meat sources were to be depleted.

Researchers estimate that the current harvest of bushmeat in Central Africa amounts to more than 1 million tonnes annually—the equivalent of almost four million head of cattle. Bushmeat provides up to 80 percent of the protein and fat needed in rural diets in Central Africa, according to the report. More