A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

[Sally Furniss]

A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

An upsurge in hunting of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians for ?bushmeat? in Central Africa?s tropical forests is unsustainable and poses a serious threat to the food security of poor forest inhabitants, who rely largely on this meat as a source of protein.
That is among the central conclusions of a new report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) and other research partners. The authors call on governments to develop policies that protect endangered species, while allowing sustainable hunting of more common game.
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" width="679"> <tbody><tr> <td width="341">Large mammals are particularly vulnerable, the report says. Many ? including elephants, gorillas and other primates ? have already become locally extinct, while fast- reproducing generalist species that thrive in agricultural environments, such as rodents, may prove more resilient. The report makes an urgent appeal for a coordinated policy response to the crisis at the local, national and international levels. It warns, however, that blanket bans on hunting and trade that do not take into account differences between local contexts and species are bound to fail.
Researchers estimate that the current harvest of bushmeat in Central Africa amounts to more than 1 million tonnes annually ? the equivalent of almost 4 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.
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Bush pigs, duikers, and monkeys for sale. Makokou market, Gabon. Photo: CIFOR.

</td> </tr> </tbody></table> ?If current levels of hunting persist in Central Africa, bush meat protein supplies will fall dramatically, and a significant number of forest mammals will become extinct in less than 50 years,? says Robert Nasi of CIFOR, an author of the report.
Entitled Conservation and Use of Wildlife-Based Resources: The Bushmeat Crisis, the report sums up the latest knowledge on this controversial issue. It makes a strong case for legalizing and regulating the bushmeat industry to ensure that the poorest forest dwellers can continue to access this vital source of protein and income.
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" width="698"> <tbody><tr> <td width="347">Local, national and regional trade in bushmeat has become a significant part of the informal sector?s ?hidden economy.? Overall, international trade in wild animal products has an estimated value of US$3.9 billion. For West and Central Africa alone, the estimates range from $42 to $205 million a year. Yet, these statistics are still largely ignored in official trade and national policies regulating forest policy.
The report notes that it is important to make a clear distinction between commercial entrepreneurs, who engage in what they know to be an illicit activity, and poor rural people, for whom bushmeat represents both a source of animal protein and a cash commodity.
?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,? says Frances Seymour, director general of CIFOR. ?Sustainable management of bushmeat resources requires bringing the sector out into the open, removing the stigma of illegality, and including wild meat consumption in national statistics and planning.?
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Skinned antelope for sale, Guinea. Photo: CIFOR. </td> </tr> </tbody></table> ?Reframing the bushmeat problem from one of international animal welfare to one of sustainable livelihoods ? and part of the global food crisis ? might be a good place to start,? she adds.
Wildlife is also adversely affected by the industrial activities, such as logging, mining and oil drilling, as these activities directly facilitate hunting through road construction and/or the provision of transportation for hunters. Salaried employees and their extended families, living in company camps or near timber concessions, are a major source of local demand for ? and supply of ? bushmeat.
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" width="709"> <tbody><tr> <td width="340">The report recommends that the local and international timber industry work with nongovernment organizations, local communities and governments to develop forest policies and management plans that incorporate wildlife concerns rather than focus just on timber and other forms of natural resource extraction. Such plans should include conservation education, an agreed system of law enforcement, development of alternative protein supplies and an intensive monitoring program. If designed and applied appropriately, those plans will not only improve wildlife conservation but also ultimately benefit the private sector and local communities as well.
According to the report, the so-called bushmeat crisis is the focus of many conservation organizations, whose advocacy for a crackdown on the trade has fostered confusion and misunderstanding about the links between hunting, wildlife trade, livelihoods and ecosystems.
Most people in tropical forests hunt, the report notes, and meat sales within the local village can be significant, including up to 90 percent of the catch sold in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Such figures counter the conventional wisdom of many conservation groups that suggests banning all commercial sales of bushmeat will deliver a win-win solution for both conservation and the poor.
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Local kids carry a monkey, Loa Loa Village, Gabon. Photo: CIFOR.

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The report advocates a more secure rights regime as the key to any solution. ?Only if the local hunter is bestowed with some right to decide what, where and how he may hunt ? as well as the knowledge to understand the consequences of his decisions ? will he embrace his responsibility to hunt sustainably,? Nasi said.
The report emphasizes the critical importance of crafting approaches tailored for specific cases and species. It also recommends that policymakers look to other renewable resource sectors, such as fishing and logging, for clues on how to develop a sustainable management strategy for bushmeat.

http://www.cgiar.org/monthlystory/october2008.html

[Sally Furniss]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

Bush-Meat Ban Would Devastate Africa's Animals, Poor?

James Owen
for National Geographic News

September 16, 2008
<!--- startbody --> A blanket ban on hunting in tropical forests won't protect animals threatened by Africa's escalating bush-meat crisis, a new report warns.
What's more, a total crackdown on the trade could prove disastrous for local communities who have few alternative sources of protein and income, the study authors warn.<!--- deckend -->

The report, led by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, assessed the latest research on bush meat—wild animals killed for food—from the world's rain forest regions.
If current hunting levels persist in Central Africa, endangered mammals such as forest elephants and gorillas will become extinct, the study suggests.
Researchers estimated the region's current wild-meat harvest at more than a million tons annually—the equivalent of almost four million cattle.
(Related: "African Refugees Spurring Bush-Meat Trade" [January 22, 2008].)
Instead of banning the practice, the report recommends that hunting for non-threatened species be legalized and regulated to protect the food supply and livelihoods of forest people.
"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," Frances Seymour, director general of CIFOR, said in a statement.
"Sustainable management of bush meat resources requires bringing the sector out into the open, removing the stigma of illegality, and including wild-meat consumption in national statistics and planning."

Poor Hunters
Making some bush meat legal would undermine the traders and exporters of illegal bush meat rather than poor subsistence hunters, the report says.
The study findings argue for legalized hunting for more abundant, fast-growing mammals such as duikers—a type of antelope—and rodents.

"Duikers in general can sustain high levels of hunting, as can rodents like porcupines or cane rats," said Nathalie Van Vliet, an associate expert for CIFOR in Cameroon.
Large-bodied animals are most at risk from the bush meat trade because they're found at lower densities than other species, experts say. And because bigger species tend to live in groups, it's easier for hunters to track them down.<!--- deckend -->
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Regulated hunting would also aid researchers' efforts to monitor bush meat harvests, Van Vliet added.
"People involved in hunting and selling bush meat currently hide most of the data because they know it's forbidden," she said.

Early Success
Successful schemes are already in place, including an agreement in southwestern Cameroon that allows local people to hunt non-threatened mammals and spare endangered Cross River gorillas.
(See a photo of a gorilla killed as bush meat in Cameroon. Warning: graphic photo.)
"There are no longer reports of hunting for this species," Van Vliet said.
Bush meat makes up 30 to 80 percent of the overall protein intake of rural communities in Central Africa, according to the new research.
Even so, various conservation groups have called for an all-out ban on bush meat.
"This has been the usual way of looking at the bush meat issue," Van Vliet said.
Noelle Kumpel, bush meat and forest-conservation program manager for the Zoological Society of London, agreed that this is the case "with certain more vocal wildlife groups, but it's not all of us."

Protein Shortage
"There's been increasing awareness of the fact that the reason why the level of bush meat has increased, and why wildlife species are threatened, is because there are more people but fewer alternative sources of protein available," Kumpel said.
Africa's growing population, coupled with reduced livestock availability and overexploitation of marine and freshwater fish stocks, means that "per capita, the bush meat protein supply is increasing," she said.
Kumpel agrees with the report's call for regulated hunting and improved land use rights for indigenous forest communities, but she says more incentives are needed to conserve wildlife.
Around 50 percent of Africa's remaining forests are now under timber concessions, she noted.
Internationally recognized timber certification awarded for sustainable logging practices can help counter illegal logging, Kumpel said, which reduces wildlife habitat.
"Tourism and things like carbon payments and payments for ecological services could bring in money for local communities," she added.
"We're looking at different ways of bringing finance into the forest to help communities work out ways of managing the wildlife, because the forest won't be sustained if there aren't animals in it."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080916-bush-meat_2.html

[Sally Furniss]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

Man Suffers from 1,415 Diseases; Blames His Gorilla Meat Diet

Written by Sam Aola Ooko
Published on August 24th, 2008
5 Comments
Posted in Africa, Global

The average man living in forest-prone areas and who depends on meat from endangered apes and other wildlife for his proteins plays the role of a carrying agent for the hundreds of infectious diseases that humanity is suffering from.
Now experts are warning of the danger to humanity this lifestyle may be posing. Most of these diseases, identified in medical terms as zoonotic because of their ability to jump from animal to man, have been labeled as ?emerging infectious diseases? or EIDs.
Over 60 percent of the 1,415 infectious diseases currently known to modern medicine are capable of infecting both humans and animals. Most of these diseases originated in animals and now infect people and include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminths, with 175 pathogenic species associated with diseases considered to be ?emerging?.
Between 1972 and 1999, 35 new agents of disease were discovered and since then many more have re-emerged with renewed vengeance after long periods of inactivity, or are expanding into areas where they have not previously been reported, according to World Health Organization (WHO). These include tuberculosis, malaria, and cholera.
Public health professionals from across the globe met in Atlanta in March for the sixth International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases, to discuss these and other emerging pathogens and current work on surveillance, epidemiology, research, bioterrorism and more.
The dissemination of EIDs, responsible for causing over 14 million deaths annually, is fueled by social factors, such as migration, poor living conditions and civic riots; customs and diet of different nations; specific qualities of microorganisms, such as a change in virulence and toxin-producing ability and resistance.
Other factors include the activity of health care systems, development of new medical devices and massive application of immuno-depressants and antibiotics.
Wildlife Conservation Society reports that as humans progress ever further into the forest, the risk of disease transmission between humans and wildlife becomes greater. Many diseases can move back and forth between species, mutating into more virulent, resistant forms.
Myths aside, it has been claimed that the HIV/ AIDS virus may be such a case, as it is thought that it entered human populations through the consumption of non-human primates. The origin of HIV has been found in wild chimpanzees living in southern Cameroon.
In the Congo, the communities that rely on wildlife for their protein are vulnerable to pathogens from the forest. Subsistence hunters sometimes take advantage of animal carcasses for food, potentially infecting themselves and their families with disease diseases in the process.
Livestock movement can introduce diseases also. Tuberculosis - a disease afflicting domesticated cattle and humans - has now spread across continents, infecting wild bison in Canada, deer in Michigan, and Cape buffalo in South Africa.
Dr William Karesh, a WCS veterinary expert, believes the threat of potential pandemics such as Ebola, SARS, and avian influenza demands a more holistic approach to disease control, one that prevents diseases from crossing the divide between humans, their livestock, and wildlife.
But this may not be good news to a good number of Africans necessitated by poverty and high food prices to rely on bush meat, including gorilla and other great apes meat, and who may be courting, among others, various new encephalitis and hemorrhagic viruses, Lassa fever, and Ebola virus.
A recent WCS survey in a remote village on the border between Gabon and Congo revealed that about 18 tons of bush meat were sold and consumed in a particular period of time. As wildlife conservationists and medical experts bite their teeth, an average 17 species are killed per day, corresponding to a biomass of 65kg per day.

http://ecoworldly.com/2008/08/24/man-suffers-from-1415-diseases-blames-his-gorilla-meat-diet/

[Laidback Al]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

. . . the risk of disease transmission between humans and wildlife becomes greater. Many diseases can move back and forth between species, mutating into more virulent, resistant forms. . . Myths aside, it has been claimed that the HIV/ AIDS virus may be such a case, as it is thought that it entered human populations through the consumption of non-human primates. The origin of HIV has been found in wild chimpanzees living in southern Cameroon . . . a good number of Africans necessitated by poverty and high food prices to rely on bush meat, including gorilla and other great apes meat, and who may be courting, among others, various new encephalitis and hemorrhagic viruses, Lassa fever, and Ebola virus. . .

Given the reliance on "bushmeat" meat in Africa, the continual emergence of novel human infections in this area needs to carefully monitored by the worldwide public health community.

[mixin]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

Wow!! After seeing that first pic of the mom and her baby, I was not prepared to see that head in a frying pan.

The headlines are slightly deceptive, so if anyone else wonders how one man could have that many diseases and still be alive, no need to check out the link at the top.

It's too bad no one can find a suitable alternative; if the elephants and gorillas go extinct due to over-hunting, that would be a terrible loss. Sometimes I think we are tearing our planet apart one little piece at a time.

[Amish Country]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

I find in interesting that the posts for bush meat single out Africa. Many people in the US also depend on wild game for all or a large part of their protein. In more rural areas and semi rural areas deer season can sound like war is breaking out from the sounds of persistent, scattered gunfire. Even now and again I hear gun shots probably of hunters adjusting hunting sites and practicing for the opening day of deer season.

Trapping animals, small game such as raccoons, ground hogs, muskrats and opossums is not especially hard. When I was growing up many boys in high school ran trap lines in our rural area of the US for their spending money.

With the current economy crisis more people are likely to fall back on hunting and fishing already limited resources. Just because some people have not hunted or fished in decades does not mean they have forgotten how. I expect poaching is likely to become much more of an issue in the US and elsewhere if times get harder.

[Sally Furniss]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

Conservation and use of wildlife-based resources: The Bushmeat crisis

http://www.yog2009.org/YoG_Downloads/CBD_ts-bushmeat_en.pdf

[Farmer]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

I find in interesting that the posts for bush meat single out Africa. Many people in the US also depend on wild game for all or a large part of their protein. In more rural areas and semi rural areas deer season can sound like war is breaking out from the sounds of persistent, scattered gunfire. Even now and again I hear gun shots probably of hunters adjusting hunting sites and practicing for the opening day of deer season.

Trapping animals, small game such as raccoons, ground hogs, muskrats and opossums is not especially hard. When I was growing up many boys in high school ran trap lines in our rural area of the US for their spending money.

With the current economy crisis more people are likely to fall back on hunting and fishing already limited resources. Just because some people have not hunted or fished in decades does not mean they have forgotten how. I expect poaching is likely to become much more of an issue in the US and elsewhere if times get harder.

I agree. I think that Africa gets the headlines because of the incredible hunting pressure on wildlife populations in some areas.

It has not achieved that kind of pressure in most terrestrial areas of the US yet. However, that may be changing in this economy. We do have deer hunting in my area, and I have seen multiple instances of poaching this past year for the first time in a decade.

We do have a recent record of depleting fisheries in the US.

We are not immune here from the realities of human greed and hunger.

[tropical]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

I agree. I think that Africa gets the headlines because of the incredible hunting pressure on wildlife populations in some areas.

It has not achieved that kind of pressure in most terrestrial areas of the US yet. However, that may be changing in this economy. We do have deer hunting in my area, and I have seen multiple instances of poaching this past year for the first time in a decade.

We do have a recent record of depleting fisheries in the US.

We are not immune here from the realities of human greed and hunger.

The tweelight of our natural environment.

Hunting for fill up the stomach for many can be a neccessity,
but poaching for money is a curse for the remaining natural life species.

And most of this regions sit on diamonds, etc.

Maybe some multilateral colosal reparation/compensation suings of the root causes could slow this process ..., but obviously that is dreaming.

[Sally Furniss]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

Science 12 November 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5699, pp. 1180 - 1183
DOI: 10.1126/science.1102425


Bushmeat Hunting, Wildlife Declines, and Fish Supply in West Africa

Justin S. Brashares,1,2* Peter Arcese,3 Moses K. Sam,4 Peter B. Coppolillo,5 A. R. E. Sinclair,6 Andrew Balmford1,7

The multibillion-dollar trade in bushmeat is among the most immediate threats to the persistence of tropical vertebrates, but our understanding of its underlying drivers and effects on human welfare is limited by a lack of empirical data. We used 30 years of data from Ghana to link mammal declines to the bushmeat trade and to spatial and temporal changes in the availability of fish. We show that years of poor fish supply coincided with increased hunting in nature reserves and sharp declines in biomass of 41 wildlife species. Local market data provide evidence of a direct link between fish supply and subsequent bushmeat demand in villages and show bushmeat's role as a dietary staple in the region. Our results emphasize the urgent need to develop cheap protein alternatives to bushmeat and to improve fisheries management by foreign and domestic fleets to avert extinctions of tropical wildlife.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/306/5699/1180

[Sally Furniss]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

AlterNet / By Anneli Rufus


Waiter, There's an Endangered Rat Snake in My Soup! Snooping into the Bloody Black Market for Wild Meat


Millions of fork-twirling gourmands -- many of them in the U.S. -- are eating endangered wildlife trafficked by international criminal networks.
February 15, 2010 |


Can shellfish cry?

Ask the 4,756 abalone bagged by smugglers and confiscated in a single recent raid on a house in Cape Town, South Africa.

It's easier to picture the pain of warm-blooded creatures, such as the two snow leopards and three ibexes whose poachers were arrested last month in China's Xinjiang province.

As for whether reptiles can cry, ask the 700 endangered rat-snakes and 582 endangered pig-nose turtles confiscated earlier this month at Jakarta, Indonesia's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. They were destined to Hong Kong, for soup.

All over the world, wild creatures are being poached and slaughtered by the millions -- to be eaten. Not in the meager kitchens of subsistence hunters, you understand, but by fork-twirling gluttons at the far ends of vast, criss-crossing, blood-encrusted international -- and criminal --networks. It happens because in Chicago and New York and Paris and nearly everywhere, some folks would rather eat baboon than beef. It happens because, somewhere, it's dinnertime -- and for some, only forbidden flesh will do.

Wildlife crime is is big business. No one knows exactly how big, because it's so pervasive that it's virtually impossible to track, but estimates run into the billions per year. Each country has its own legislation regarding wildlife trafficking, but these laws are only as strong as they are enforceable. Adopted in 1973, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is a conservation-minded agreement between 175 nations aiming to regulate, if not prohibit, the wildlife trade. Again, it's a great idea that, for some, is great to flout.

As felonies go, wildlife crime really upsets us. Why? Millions of animals die in slaughterhouses every year, and while those deaths gall some of us, the notion of slain apes and elephants sparks a more universal outrage, even among carnivores. Does the wholesale killing of wild creatures anguish us more because they're wild and thus, like us, born free? (In which case, were slaves born into slavery less tragic, and less enslaved, than those shipped overseas in chains?)

We hear stories like that of the woman who faced a New York City judge last December for having smuggled dozens of monkey and baboon limbs and torsos into the United States from Guinea, and we'd like to think we know better. We'd like to think we've outgrown everything that hunting, killing and eating wild animals entails. Our ancestors did that, and through our modern eyes it seems primitive, speciesist and gross -- and we're ashamed.

"The United States is one of the world's largest, if not the largest, consuming nations for wildlife products. This includes wildlife used for food, whether for cultural reasons or luxury markets," says Leigh Henry, a senior policy officer for the World Wildlife Fund and the international wildlife-trade monitoring network TRAFFIC. "Since the demand continues, so does the trafficking."

Nope: Neither environmental enlightenment nor Animal Planet have stopped it from happening here.

These stories seldom make the mainstream news. Last May, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents at Newark, New Jersey's Liberty International Airport seized over 19 pounds of antelope and cane-rat meat from a passenger arriving from Uganda via Amsterdam. (Cane rats are cat-sized rodents found throughout sub-Saharan Africa.) A CBP photograph shows this meat piled high: dark, dry, ragged hunks resembling jerky. It was 2009's sixth CBP seizure in Newark alone of bushmeat, the term for the flesh of wild creatures traditionally savored in Africa for their flavor, protein and wild status. Concealed in luggage, in sleeves, inside packages of other food, it flows over our borders.
A July 2006 report tallied over 62 pounds of bushmeat confiscated that year at just one American airport: Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International. The meat was thought to have come from Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and/or Liberia. During another Atlanta seizure in February 2009, agents confiscated two pounds of wild tortoise meat and 31 tortoise eggs from an overseas traveler. The accompanying photo shows a tortoise's midsection, gory and trailing tissue where it has been torn from the shell. Its hind legs remain intact, claws and all.

Meat products from wild game being brought into the United States are subject to many layers of legislation including Animal, Plant and Health Inspection Services regulations and the provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, enforced by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some of this legislation is conservation-minded: Import and export of endangered wildlife species, and products made from them, is just plain illegal in the United States. And much of the legislation stems from health concerns, as meat and poultry are notorious transmitters of deadly diseases that can infect human beings as well as livestock.
Regulations on bringing meat and meat products into this country are strict overall, with an ever-shifting array of foreign nations put on the restricted list based on disease outbreaks around the world. The long list of maladies the USDA is striving to defend us (and the American livestock industry) from includes African swine fever, swine vesicular disease, rinderpest, foot-and-mouth disease, avian influenza (aka bird flu) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (aka mad-cow disease). Nearly all meat products from Nigeria, for example, are currently prohibited because Nigeria is on the list of nations affected by both the highly pathogenic avian influenza and foot-and-mouth disease.

Prohibited items undeclared by international passengers -- such as the Atlanta tortoise and the Newark cane rat -- are confiscated and disposed of by CBP agents. Smugglers are punished.

"Civil penalties may be assessed for violations and may range up to $1,000 for a first-time offense," explains CPB press officer Erlinda Byrd "Depending on whether the confiscated, undeclared items are intentionally concealed or determined to be for commercial use, civil penalties may be assessed as high as $50,000 for individuals." The same fines apply to prohibited animal products sent through the international mail.

Granted, not all of the wildlife trafficked into -- and inside -- the United States is meant to be eaten. Some of it is destined for the vast underground exotic-pets market. Some is stuffed and sold as trophies. Some, like the 12 gallons of scorpions confiscated one day last October in Brownsville, Texas from a Mexican traveler who planned to encase them in lucite for sale at flea markets, are fashioned into trinkets.

And parts of many wild creatures are sold as alleged medicine: Bear bile, for example, is popular in Asian communities among those who claim it cures liver and stomach problems. A man was charged in Seattle last month with illegally killing six black bears and trafficking in their parts; during an earlier seizure, the same man was caught in possession of 18 dried bears' gallbladders. But in a country that naturally overflows with good (and legal) food, including some of the world's premier meats, business is nonetheless booming in prohibited flesh, much of it from endangered species. And the dirty little secret behind this trade -- that is, besides mad-cow disease -- is the fact that ethnic communities are its biggest customers.

"We see bushmeat coming into the U.S. illegally to feed demand from expatriate African communities," says the WWF's Leigh Henry. Antelope and cane rat are common, "but occasionally species of greater conservation concern are imported as well, including great apes."

Grilled gorilla -- in America?

Pass the salt. A team organized by UC Berkeley professor of wildlife ecology Justin Brashares has found chimp and gorilla meat being sold at markets in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles -- as well as London, Toronto, Montreal, Paris and Brussels. The project got its start when Brashares asked a Ghanaian taxi driver in New York whether he missed bushmeat since leaving Africa. The taxi driver said he didn't miss it at all and offered to show Brashares where bushmeat could be bought regularly in Brooklyn.

It's true for all of us that the foods of our youth retain a hold on us, an enchantment of history and identity. That's why the market for exotic meat has gone global. And that's why, among those who grew up eating bushmeat, "it has a cultural cachet," says Dale Peterson, the author of Eating Apes (University of California Press, 2003). "If you go into a big city" -- in Africa, in America, wherever Africans live -- "you can buy ape meat. It's more expensive than domestic meat, but people will pay for it because they want to be reminded of life in the village where their grandparents are.

"This is not just a conservation problem but a serious public-health problem. The hunting and consumption of ape meat is the origin of HIV1" -- researchers believe that AIDS entered our species when Africans ate chimpanzee meat infected with Simian Immunodeficiency Virus -- "and there are a lot of other similar lentiviruses out there in primate meat. We know that now, and we live in a world where instead of a few people dying in a village from eating a piece of infected meat, the meat is transported by someone on a bicycle, then someone on a truck, then someone on a plane, and you get a global pandemic, and that's what AIDS is."

Ape meat comprises only a small percentage of the bushmeat sold and eaten by Africans worldwide. Some of that meat is elephant, which was the subject of Peterson's subsequent book Elephant Reflections (University of California Press, 2009).

"Elephant-eating is quite extensive," he affirms. "In Central Africa, where the bush-trade business is biggest, it's very common to kill an elephant and pack up the meat as well as the tusks, and sell both." Of all bushmeat, ape meat anguishes him the most. His voice catches when he speaks of being offered chimpanzee hands to eat in Cameroon.

"Apes look humanlike. And if you know them well enough, they also act humanlike." Chimpanzees, after all, share 98 percent of our DNA. That's exactly why many Africans -- along with most people everywhere -- shun ape meat, Peterson says. But it's also exactly why so many crave it.

"At least fifty percent of people who eat ape meat for cultural reasons do so because the ape is humanlike, and the mythology is that by eating it, you'll acquire superhuman strength. In cultures where people eat ape meat, it's typically considered 'the man's meat.'" Like so many other trafficked animal parts, it's considered a bloody version of Viagra.

"This meat travels across borders very freely," Peterson says. "Yes, ape meat is illegal everywhere, and yes, lots and lots and lots of local laws make it illegal, but nobody pays attention to them. I'm amazed at how little the global bushmeat trade has become common knowledge. But there's a strong resistance to talking about it, because it could easily seem racist -- blaming the Africans for what they eat. It's a delicate subject ... but I do think we have the right to say, 'Stop doing this. We live in the modern world now.'"

For wildlife, modernity has its good and bad points. A good point is the rise of environmental activism. A bad point is the ease and speed by which technology now lets traffickers transport meat and announce to their customers that it's for sale.

"The U.S. has one of the most well-resourced wildlife enforcement operations in the world," says the WWF's Leigh Henry, "but there are too many ports, airports, and individuals and vehicles crossing our borders to intercept all of the trade. We have to work to reduce demand for species of conservation concern, raise public awareness of the threats facing them, and increase the resources available to enforcement officials if we're to see the trade stop."

That's an uphill battle, waged not only by activist groups and national agencies --on a single typical day last year, for example, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents seized over 4,291 prohibited plant, meat and animal byproducts -- but by their counterparts in each state. Overseeing vast seashores, exotic wildlife and thriving ethnic communities, Florida Department of Fish and Wildlife agents "deal not only with domestic issues but with shipments of wildlife coming in and going out," says FFW investigator Curtis Brown.
One recent problem was "huge, untold numbers of turtles" being caught in Florida lakes, ponds and streams and "being exported for the Asian market ... because Asian countries were depleting their native turtle populations, and they love to eat softshell and snapping turtle. They put them in soup." Another issue is what Brown calls "back-door sales," by which "Asian restaurants were buying any fish that anyone brought in; they'd label it sushi-grade this or that, and put it on the buffet. This is fraud at the consumer level. When people eat something that they think meets official sanitation standards, but it doesn't, that can get a little scary," Brown says.

"Every time we turn around, some new animal is being utilized in the commercial market. The Russian community likes caviar," which is garnered illegally from Florida sturgeon and paddlefish. The Caribbean community savors conch, whose harvesting is prohibited here as well. Queen conch, an internationally protected endangered species, is gathered off Florida's coast and sold internationally by smuggling rings such as the one caught in Canada in 2007, when two Florida residents were nabbed by Environment Canada Wildlife Enforcement officers. Under that country's laws the pair received fines of U.S. $10,000 for importing queen conch meat into Canada. During the preceding 18-month investigation, their ring had moved some 264,000 pounds of the meat.

Another Asian standby is shark-fin soup.

"Typically we catch people selling the fins," Brown laments. That's a conservation tragedy, in that great white sharks are an endangered species. It's also a form of animal cruelty because shark-fin harvesters typically sever fins from live sharks, throwing the animals back in the ocean and leaving them to die a slow, painful death. But this form of wildlife trafficking has yet another layer, Brown explains:

"The bottom line is that sometimes you can fin a shark and it can survive. And if a finned shark survives, it will swim ashore and eat anything it can find," because this is easier for a disabled creature than hunting at sea.

"We just don't want finless sharks swimming ashore."

Like their Florida counterparts, California Fish and Game agents must contend with hundreds of miles of coastline -- as well as forests deep enough, mountains high enough and deserts desolate enough to hide much malfeasance. Their work inspired novelist Kirk Russell to write a series of thrillers featuring CFG warden John Marquez, whose Special Operations Unit tackled abalone poachers in Shell Games (Chronicle Books, 2003), bear-bile traffickers in Night Game (Chronicle Books, 2004) and sturgeon poachers in Dead Game (Chronicle Books, 2007).
Russell spent over six years doing ride-alongs with the CFGSO unit. He saw many different kinds of wildlife crime, "but really it's all the same; it's about money," Russell says. "It's just the explanations that differ. The apparent truth is: If it can be caught and sold, it will be. Whether it's somebody just trying to make a few bucks to buy drinks or an out-of-work carpenter trying to sell a sturgeon to pay for his daughter's cancer medicine so she doesn't die, wildlife is money. Is it as simple as greed or cultural habit, the poor family just trying to survive? I think it's about life, respect for life," says the author. An avid hiker, he ponders: "I think at some point walking along it's natural to ask: Can't we live as part of this rather than in control or in opposition? ... Is wildlife truly another commodity?"

Unfortunately, yes. Yes, it is.

"I'm picturing a beach south of Fort Bragg near dawn in a low tide when the streets with beach access are lined with cars because with a minus two-foot tide it's easier to get in and get your limit of abalone -- and, if you're poaching with a group, easier to coordinate. The wardens are up against improbable odds, especially with the slow breeders like abalone and sturgeon," Russell says. "The only real hope is the public. It's going to take us to save these species."

Well, there's "us" and there's us. Inside and outside this country, the wildlife trade is booming like you wouldn't believe. Eating Apes author Dale Peterson describes visiting an area in northern Myanmar along the Chinese border that is a smugglers' row, perpetually lined for miles with captured animals, dead and alive, whole and in parts, ready to be brought into China and perhaps beyond.

"Everything's for sale, from puppies to bears," Peterson says.

"When I see Africans selling ape meat, I don't agree with what they're doing, and I wish they would stop, but I don't feel moral outrage, because I think they're basically decent people who just think differently about animals. Yet I actually grew quite angry in Asia. It was just so egregious. Burma has this wonderful Buddhism, and the people in many ways seem very gentle, yet you get to the edge of China and animals don't exist anymore as animals. They're just objects. I think that's worse than the way it is in Africa," where the meat of certain animals is relished because the animals themselves are so admired. By contrast, Asia's wildlife trade "is crueler. It's stupider. There's something so empty about it. I recoiled."

The expansion of China's economy has meant more pocket money for a billion-strong population. And it's impossible to deny that many want to spend it on exotic meats. Traveling in southern China in the '90s, I saw cats, dogs and snakes in cages stacked up outside restaurants where hawkers urged us to come inside and taste them cooked. We wandered horrified through outdoor meat markets in a country whose beloved smuggled meats include the endangered pangolin, a docile scaly anteater whose flesh and blood are said -- surprise, surprise --to boost virility.

Conservationists tracking the global wildlife trade compare China to a vacuum cleaner, virtually sucking the wildlife out of Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In all of those countries, grinding poverty makes poaching appear attractive indeed. Pol Pot's brutal regime long served as a default conservation device in Cambodia: not because Pol Pot loved animals, but because his Khmer Rouge forces ruled the forests where poachers would otherwise roam. These days, poaching gangs thrive, using landmines to mangle both their prey and law-enforcement officers. As a result, Cambodia's tiger, bear and elephant populations are dwindling as prices for the meat of these animals soars -- largely in China, where the fact that the lunar Year of the Tiger begins this week is all too ironic. Conservation experts estimate that in all of vast China, only 50 wild tigers remain: not so surprising in a land where a single tiger's parts -- including paws and penis -- are collectively worth from US $10,000 to $70,000, according to a World Bank report.

At a Beijing ceremony on February 2, over 100 Chinese authors signed an anti-trafficking banner created by the China Wildlife Conservation Association. The CWCA has also been enlisting chefs to join its "No Cooking Rare, Precious Wildlife" campaign, because rare, precious wildife is indeed cooked there.

http://www.alternet.org/food/145668/waiter,_there%27s_an_endangered_rat_snake_in_my_soup!_snooping_into_the_bloody_black_market_for_wild_meat?page=entire

[tropical]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

#11:
"All over the world, wild creatures are being poached and slaughtered by the millions -- to be eaten. Not in the meager kitchens of subsistence hunters, you understand, but by fork-twirling gluttons at the far ends of vast, criss-crossing, blood-encrusted international -- and criminal --networks."
...
"The United States is one of the world's largest, if not the largest, consuming nations for wildlife products."
...
""This meat travels across borders very freely," Peterson says. "Yes, ape meat is illegal everywhere, and yes, lots and lots and lots of local laws make it illegal, but nobody pays attention to them."
...
"Grilled gorilla -- in America?

Pass the salt. A team organized by UC Berkeley professor of wildlife ecology Justin Brashares has found chimp and gorilla meat being sold at markets in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles -- as well as London, Toronto, Montreal, Paris and Brussels."


#11:
"Conservationists tracking the global wildlife trade compare China to a vacuum cleaner, virtually sucking the wildlife out of Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In all of those countries, grinding poverty makes poaching appear attractive indeed."
"... in China, where the fact that the lunar Year of the Tiger begins this week is all too ironic. Conservation experts estimate that in all of vast China, only 50 wild tigers remain: not so surprising in a land where a single tiger's parts -- including paws and penis -- are collectively worth from US $10,000 to $70,000, according to a World Bank report.

At a Beijing ceremony on February 2, over 100 Chinese authors signed an anti-trafficking banner created by the China Wildlife Conservation Association. The CWCA has also been enlisting chefs to join its "No Cooking Rare, Precious Wildlife" campaign, because rare, precious wildife is indeed cooked there."

__________________________________________________ ____________

the gourmet-brain destructors.


The movie Af. adieu, was stamped as ras. (who are the real guilty to blame questions),
but the real documentaries displayed there, depicted the ferocity of wild animal mass killings/seiz. in the past (things very hard/cry to watch in impotence; the sided rope tecnic large scale massacre effects were especialy unwatchable),
brutal killings which seems are stil present somewhere, as this thread point to.

___

~ "after, the world will not be the same as we are used to know it"

we could apply the above sentence wide range,
and no shame, no remorse, for the irreversible damage they did
hell on earth for many species


natural world everywhere, addieu
greed inc.


#11:
"He saw many different kinds of wildlife crime, "but really it's all the same; it's about money," Russell says. "It's just the explanations that differ. The apparent truth is: If it can be caught and sold, it will be."
...
[b]"I think it's about life, respect for life," says the author. An avid hiker, he ponders: "I think at some point walking along it's natural to ask: Can't we live as part of this rather than in control or in opposition?"

[Amish Country]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

As the recession in my area of the US is getting worse I am noticing less and less deer grazing in fields along country roads where they were once a common sight. I expect a sharp decrease in accidents and fatalities rates involving vehicle collisions with deer and wonder if area hospitals and healthcare practitioners have been given notice to look for zoonotic diseases common in local area game such as tularemia?

[tropical]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

As the recession in my area of the US is getting worse I am noticing less and less deer grazing in fields along country roads where they were once a common sight. I expect a sharp decrease in accidents and fatalities rates involving vehicle collisions with deer and wonder if area hospitals and healthcare practitioners have been given notice to look for zoonotic diseases common in local area game such as tularemia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tularemia

...
In the United States, although records show that tularemia was never particularly common, incidence rates continued to drop over the course of the 20th century so that between 1990 and 2000, the rate was less than 1 per 1,000,000, meaning the disease is extremely rare in the US today.<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference">[10]</sup>


Clinical manifestations and microbiological diagnosis

Depending on the site of infection, tularemia has six characteristic clinical syndromes: ulceroglandular (the most common type representing 75% of all forms), glandular, oropharyngeal, pneumonic, oculoglandular, and typhoidal.<sup id="cite_ref-10" class="reference">[11]</sup>
The incubation period for tularemia is 1 to 14 days; most human infections become apparent after 3 to 5 days.<sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference">[12]</sup> In most susceptible mammals, the clinical signs include fever, lethargy, anorexia, signs of septicemia, and possibly death. Animals rarely develop the skin lesions seen in people. Subclinical infections are common and animals often develop specific antibodies to the organism. Fever is moderate or very high and tularemia bacillus can be isolated from blood cultures at this stage. Face and eyes redden and become inflamed. Inflammation spreads to the lymph nodes, which enlarge and may suppurate (mimicking bubonic plague). Lymph node involvement is accompanied by a high fever. Death occurs in less than 1% if therapy is initiated promptly.

A culture of Francisella tularensis.


The microbiologist must be informed when tularemia is suspected because F. tularensis requires special media for cultivation such as buffered charcoal and yeast extract (BCYE). It cannot be isolated in the routine culture media because of the need for sulfhydryl group donors (such as cystein). Serological tests (detection of antibodies in the serum of the patients) are available and widely used. Cross reactivity with Brucella can confuse interpretation of the results, and for this reason diagnosis should not rely only on serology. Molecular methods such as PCR are available in reference laboratories. The bacteria can penetrate into the body through damaged skin and mucous membranes, or through inhalation. Humans are most often infected by tick bite or through handling an infected animal. Ingesting infected water, soil, or food can also cause infection. Tularemia can also be acquired by inhalation; hunters are at a higher risk for this disease because of the potential of inhaling the bacteria during the skinning process. It has been contracted from inhaling particles from an infected rabbit ground up in a lawnmower (see below). Tularemia is not spread directly from person to person.<sup class="Template-Fact" title="This claim needs references to reliable sources from November 2009" style="white-space: nowrap;">[citation needed]</sup>

[Shiloh]

Re: A Fresh Look at Bushmeat

Source: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...lled-bushmeat/

April 14, 2010, 6:38 pm
Scientists Say Tests Show Dangers in So-Called Bushmeat
By JAMES BARRON

Scientists who have begun testing bushmeat ? meat from African wild game that is often carried through customs in luggage, or shipped by mail ? say they have discovered viruses related to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

Dr. William Karesh, a veterinarian in charge of Wildlife Conservation Society health programs, said the viruses showed up in spot checks of ?hundreds of samples? that were only a fraction of the bushmeat that comes into New York. The viruses in question have been shown to infect humans, but Dr. Kristine Smith, another veterinarian from the society, said in a presentation at Rockefeller University on Wednesday that they were not known to cause disease.

Since the study began in 2008, inspection officials and health experts have collected samples of bushmeat from at least 14 species, including apes, monkeys, rodents and bats. Dr. Karesh said that the research completed so far was ?just a pilot project? with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

?To hit pay dirt right in the beginning, it?s surprising,? he said,..