Bushmeat

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. 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.