Drivers

A small remote village in the Congo forest. Source

These areas are poor! They are also in very isolated areas. They don't have access to other types of foods like beef or poultry. So they hunt what lives wildly in the forests and use this wildlife as a main protein source, as well as a main source of income. This wasn't a big problem until logging roads into the forests created a relatively easy way for poachers to access these areas. Populations started to grow, and demand for bushmeat took off. Villages and smaller, more remote towns demand bushmeat because of how cheap it is compared to other types of sustainable meat. Bushmeat has also become a symbol for wealth and status in the cities of Africa, which is pushing demand up as well.

The high demand for bushmeat has led to the over-exploitation of many species. Over-exploitation is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity at the moment. It is one of six major threats, HIPPOC, which stands for habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, population growth, over-exploitation, and climate change. According to lecture, over-exploitation is the #2 threat to biodiversity behind habitat loss because over-exploitation leads to extinctions and habitat loss, which also leads to extinction.

Figure I created from a table in Wilkie and Carpenter, 1998.

An estimated millions of tonnes of bushmeat is harvested every year (Milner-Gulland, 2003)