The Bushmeat Crisis Task Force (BCTF)

Abstract

There is an immediate and rapidly growing threat to the future of Africa’s irreplaceable wildlife: the unsustainable, often illegal, unregulated commercial harvesting of wildlife for meat, also known as the bushmeat trade.1 A multi-billion dollar industry, bushmeat is now the most significant threat to wildlife populations, including great apes, in Africa today (Bennett et al., 2002b). Complex interactions between extractive industries (logging, mining, oil), transportation systems (roads and railroads), human population growth, absence of dietary alternatives, lack of governmental infrastructure, and widespread poverty have resulted in a rapid increase in the commercial trade in wildlife for meat. The commercial bushmeat trade results in the depletion of a wide range of wildlife, ranging from large- to small-bodied species. Due to their relatively low productivity, tropical forests are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of the commercial wildlife trade. The result is that, while forests may remain intact, they may be nearly devoid of wildlife—a phenomenon that has been termed the “empty forest syndrome” (Bennett et al., 2002a).