Wild meat - bushmeat use
For millennia, terrestrial wildlife has been the primary source of protein and a major contributor to local livelihoods for millions of tropical forest inhabitants worldwide. Although humans have always used wildlife as a source of food and materials, the scale of current harvest is unprecedented, rapidly accelerating and mostly unsustainable. Harvest of wild meat, also called bushmeat, has profound impacts on hunted species on a global scale and particularly in the tropics and subtropics. Nature Heritage has been involved in several projects on the ecology of wild meat harvesting.
Food and livelihoods in communities adjacent to a National Park in the Republic of Congo
We gathered information on bushmeat consumption, income, material assets, and hunter perception of the state of wildlife in communities adjacent to the Odzala Kokoua National Park. Our results highlight the possible importance of PAs and adjacent areas as reservoirs of wildlife and in maintaining wild meat resources used by the surrounding human populations.
Wild meat use by Baka Pygmies in Cameroon
Baka Pygmies are hunter-gatherers of the tropical forest in West Africa. As a result of sedentarisation many Baka have changed their mobility patterns away from nomadic lifestyles to living in roadside villages. These settled groups are increasingly dependent on cultivated foods but still rely on forest resources. Read More
Wild meat consumption in urban areas of Central Africa
The trade of bushmeat from rural areas to supply burgeoning cities is a major conservation and livelihood concern. Using a whole-city sampling strategy we mapped the distribution and numbers of meat outlets in the Kinshasa–Brazzaville metropolitan area, the two neighbouring capital cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo, respectively, in Central Africa.
Socioeconomics and the trade in ape meat and parts
The hunting of great apes and gibbons for their meat and parts is and ever increasing problem for wildlife conservation. In this chapter for the latest book in the book series State of the Apes by the Arcus Foundation, we review wild meat hunting, Read More