|
Bushmeat
What is Bushmeat?
In Africa, forest is often referred to as 'the
bush', thus wildlife and the meat derived from it is referred to as 'bushmeat.’
What is the Crisis? Commercial, illegal and unsustainable hunting for the meat
of wild animals is causing widespread local extinctions in Asia and West Africa.
It is a crisis because of rapid expansion to countries and species which were
previously not at risk, largely due to an increase in commercial logging, with
an infrastructure of roads and trucks that links forests and hunters to cities
and consumers.
The bodies of four mountain gorillas
killed in the Virunga National Park July, 2007
The failure of conservation in
great ape range countries is due to primarily to human crises -- poverty,
illness, war, commercial greed, political corruption, lawlessness. There is one
cause of failure that is the conservationist’s responsibility -- incompetence.
The leaders of the conservation movement come from fields and disciplines that
don’t address the causes of the wildlife crisis. Conservation in the face of
poverty, illness, war, etc., demands experts in human welfare and health,
peacekeeping and conflict resolution, crime prevention and law enforcement,
commercial contract negotiation and compliance assurance, food production,
political ethics and morality, financial transparency, spiritual renewal, etc,
etc -- all these are human factors domains. Business, applied social science,
organization development, law and medicine, cultural ethics, politics and
finance, theology and religion -- these are the fields that must carry on the
major part of the conservation effort from now on.-
Anthony L. Rose, Ph.D. / The Biosynergy Institute; Antioch University Southern
California
A
Group of Gorillas:Slaughtered
In
most of Africa the demand is growing for the meat of forest animals-this is
known as "bushmeat". The "bushmeat" most in demand is
that from Gorillas, Elephants and Chimpanzees.
Thousands
of hunters earn their living from slaughtering these animals.
Some
of the "notable" casualties have been the Gorillas Mushauuka, who
was featured in the movie "Gorillas in The Mist" and Manheshe, who
was featured on the Zaire 50E000 currency note.
The
Eastern lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla graueri) is found only in eastern
Congo. In 1998, before the most recent wave of killings, there were fewer
than 17 000 of them left alive.
The
loss in elephant numbers has been even more dramatic in the Kahuzi-Biega
park, with a total population of 320 in 1996 reduced to fewer than 20, and
possibly as little as five.
Mass
slaughtering of Gorillas are occurring in the Congo where a bloody civil war
is taking place. The combatants on both sides are killing Gorillas for food.
Smoked
Gorilla Hands
Rare
eastern lowland Gorillas and hundreds of elephants have been slaughtered in
the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kahuzi- Biega national park near the
Rwandan border since war first broke out in the area in 1996 - and the
carnage is continuing.
Meanwhile,
in other parts of Congo, the war is threatening other vulnerable species.
Gorilla Bushmeat
The
rare Bonobo chimpanzees, which are only to be found in Congo, have the
misfortune to live on the front line between the forces of Congolese
President Laurent Kabila and rebel leader Jean- Pierre Bemba in Equateur
province.
The
result has been their mass killing for bush meat, most of which appears to
travel down the Congo river with Kabila's soldiers to Kinshasa.
Although
conservation groups are trying to mobilize action on the issue, the
preservation of Congo's gorillas and other endangered species never came up
during the Lusaka peace process, or during the week in January devoted to
the Congolese civil war at the United Nations headquarters in New York. More
gorillas and other endangered species seem sure to die at the hands of
poachers - further casualties of Congo's brutal and seemingly never-ending
civil war.
Even
in so called "protected area" of Africa poaching is rampant.
The
future and fate of these great creatures is in the balance.
The
obliteration and annihilation looks inevitable without immediate
intervention.
To
learn more about the slaughter of The Great Apes click on the logo below
Gorilla
photographs by Karl Ammann
http://karlammann.com
|
