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The bush-meat trade is threatening to bring a further depletion in Africa’s great apes, the world’s leading chimpanzee and gorilla conservationist, Jane Goodall, has warned.
She said that although governments on the continent have agreed to the protection of the primates, corruption and commercial interests involving logging companies are making conservation efforts futile.
Extensive destruction of the forests by international logging firms in Central Africa has exposed the primates, mainly chimpanzees, to bush-meat hunters who are killing off the parent chimps, leaving babies orphaned.
They sell the meat on local and illegal international markets, Goodall said.
“The bush meat crisis is very very serious. Animals are being eaten to extinction,” she told reporters at the sidelines of an international primate conference in Uganda.
“My concern is with the great apes of the Congo basin. Logging firms go deep into the forests which were originally inaccessible to hunters. People used to hunt for bush meat for centuries on a family basis and mostly for food and for cultural rites like magic,” Goodall said.
She said that the most affected states in the bush-meat crisis are the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville and Equatorial Guinea and that the bush meat trade brings in $1 billion every year to the Central African Republic.
“The local hunting for bush meat has now changed to commercial hunting and everything that can be eaten is shot and smoked. The most affected primates are chimps,” Goodall said.
Goodall said that due to the destruction of the forests and the current bush meat demand, the equatorial and tropical forested regions of Africa which were teeming with up to two million chimpanzees over 100 years ago, are today home to only about 200,000 chimps.
Henry Wasswa
