Elephant trunks and smoked gorilla limbs hang from Emile Ndong's stall, "ripening" in the tropical heat.
"A good ceremony, a marriage or an initiation is worthless unless you serve game at the table," said Ndong, a hawker at the Oloumi market in Gabon's capital of Libreville.
Ndong is one of many profiting from Africa's booming trade in bushmeat - a blood-soaked business that has serious consequences for the continent's wildlife.
Ways to curtail this industry will be discussed at an international conference in Madagascar from June 20-24. The conference will also look for ways to harness Africa's ecological treasures for development, while protecting them.
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| 'Biggest threat to biodiversity in central Africa' |
"Bushmeat is probably the biggest threat to biodiversity in central Africa," said Juan Carlos Bonilla, head of the Central Africa programme for Conservation International.
From Ivory Coast in the west through Equatorial Guinea to Kenya in the east, poaching to feed the bushmeat market is rampant. And it is threatening entire species, including the great apes.
Even in South Africa, poor farmers and rural labourers poach wild game to supplement their incomes, using snares, poisons and traps. In west and central Africa bushmeat is big business.
"In the past game was locally hunted and consumed as part of the diet of villagers. Now it is being consumed on an industrial scale," said Bonilla. He said two key factors were driving the trade.
"There is rapid urbanisation, with cities becoming populated with migrants from the countryside. These migrants settle but continue a way of life that is linked to the forest," he said.
Bushmeat has long been a staple among forest communities. The other factor is the opening up of previously remote and wildlife-rich regions by the logging industry, which is hacking new roads into rainforests.
"These are structured markets which start with commercial hunters in the forest linked to major urban markets," Bonilla said. The prices vary but delicacies such as monkey can command $150 or more. The hunters get a pittance.
Conservationists have warned that poaching, logging and disease could wipe out species. But there is also a health risk for humans: scientists think past outbreaks of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in central Africa were caused by the consumption of infected monkey meat. - Reuters
- This article was originally published on page 4 of Pretoria News on June 17, 2006
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