Bushmeat is meat from wildlife species that are hunted for human consumption. Bushmeat represents a primary source of animal protein and a cash-earning commodity for inhabitants of humid tropical forest regions in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Bushmeat is an important food resource in poor, rural communities.
The numbers of animals killed and traded as bushmeat in the 1990s in West and Central Africa were thought to be unsustainable. By 2005, commercial harvesting and trading of bushmeat was considered a threat to biodiversity. As of 2016, 301 terrestrial mammals were threatened with extinction due to hunting for bushmeat including primates, even-toed ungulates, bats, diprotodont marsupials, rodents and carnivores occurring in developing countries.
Bushmeat provides increased opportunity for transmission of several zoonotic viruses from animal hosts to humans, such as Ebolavirus and HIV.
Nomenclature
The term 'bushmeat' is originally an African term for wildlife species that are hunted for human consumption, and usually refers specifically to the meat of African wildlife. In October 2000, the IUCN World Conservation Congress passed a resolution on the unsustainable commercial trade in wild meat. Affected countries were urged to recognize the increasing impact of the bushmeat trade, to strengthen and enforce legislation, and to develop action programmes to mitigate the impact of the trade. Donor organisations were requested to provide funding for the implementation of such programmes.
Wildlife hunting for food is important for the livelihood security of and supply of dietary protein for poor people. It can be sustainable when carried out by traditional hunter-gatherers in large landscapes for their own consumption. Due to the extent of bushmeat hunting for trade in markets, the survival of those species that are large-bodied and reproduce slowly is threatened. The term bushmeat crisis was coined in 2007 and refers to this dual threat of depleting food resources and wildlife extinctions, both entailed by the bushmeat trade.
Affected wildlife species
Globally, more than 1,000 animal species are estimated to be affected by hunting for bushmeat. Bushmeat hunters use mostly leg-hold snare traps to catch any wildlife, but prefer to kill large species, as these provide a greater amount of meat than small species.
The volume of the bushmeat trade in West and Central Africa was estimated at per year at the turn of the 21st century. In 2002, it was estimated that species weighing more than contribute of meat per year to the bushmeat extracted in the Congo Basin, based on 24 individuals. Species weighing less than were estimated to contribute , also based on 24 individuals. Bushmeat extraction in the Amazon rainforest was estimated to be much lower, at in the case of species weighing more than 10 kg and in the case of species weighing less than 10 kg, based on 3 individuals. Based on these estimates, a total of bushmeat is extracted in the Congo Basin per year, ranging from in Equatorial Guinea to in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The 301 mammal species threatened by hunting for bushmeat comprise 126 primates, 65 even-toed ungulates, 27 bats, 26 diprotodont marsupials, 21 rodents, 12 carnivores and all pangolin species.
Primate species offered fresh and smoked in 2009 at a wildlife market by Liberia's Cavally River included chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana), putty-nosed monkey (C. nictitans), lesser spot-nosed monkey (C. petaurista), Campbell's mona monkey (C. campbelli), sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys), king colobus (Colobus polykomos), olive colobus (Procolobus verus), western red colobus (P. badius). Duiker species constituted more than half of the total 723 animals offered. In 2012, the bushmeat trade was surveyed in three villages in the Sassandra Department, Ivory Coast. During six months, nine restaurants received 376 mammals and eight reptiles, including dwarf crocodile (Osteolaemus tetraspis), harnessed bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus), Maxwell's duiker (Philantomba maxwellii), bay duiker (Cephalophus dorsalis), Campbell's mona monkey, lesser spot-nosed monkey, potto (Perodicticus potto), tree pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis), long-tailed pangolin (P. tetradactyla), African brush-tailed porcupine (Atherurus africanus), giant pouched rat (Cricetomys gambianus), greater cane rat (Thryonomys swinderianus), striped ground squirrel (Xerus erythropus) and western tree hyrax (Dendrohyrax dorsalis). About 128,400 straw-coloured fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) were estimated in 2011 to be traded as bushmeat every year in four cities in southern Ghana.