Central Africa’s Wild Meat Dilemma – Why Outright Bans Threaten Food Security for Millions

Millions of people in central Africa rely on wild meat for their nutrition, especially in rural areas around the Congo rainforest, the second largest tropical rainforest in the world. Here, meat from domestic animals is scarce due to poor national transport infrastructure, livestock diseases and lack of forage. As a result, wild meat and freshwater fish are the main animal foods and provide the proteins and micro-nutrients needed for a healthy diet.

At the same time the growing demand for wild meat coming from a growing urban population provides an economic opportunity for rural hunters. In the past 20 years, the proportion of wild meat sold on average by subsistence hunters in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 34% to 72% of their catches. In essence, hunters used to sell about a third of their catches, but today they sell almost three quarters of their catches.

As a conservation biologist, I am interested in understanding the factors influencing the viability of wildlife populations, finding a balance between wildlife conservation and people’s livelihood. In a recent paper, I examined the extent of wild meat consumption in central Africa together with 45 colleagues from 33 institutions from 12 countries. Using data from over 12,000 households from 252 locations, we found that for rural people, wild meat accounts for 20% of the recommended daily protein intake. This compared with 13% and 6% for those living in towns and cities, though our modelling suggests this is growing.

One major cause of concern about these consumption patterns is the threat of animal transmitted epidemics, as the recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda has underscored. The Bundibugyo virus, which is the cause of the disease, can be contracted through the handling and consumption of infected wild animals.

These outbreaks invariably lead to calls to stop the trade and consumption of wild animals. But our study suggests that heeding those calls could result in a humanitarian catastrophe in most of rural central Africa. As our study shows, wild meat remains an important component of people’s diets there.

Instead of banning the consumption of wildlife, we propose the legal and sustainable use of non-protected wild animals in rural areas. Clear national laws co-designed with people who hunt and eat wild meat could enable the sustainable management of these remaining species. It would improve the sustainability of the wild meat sector in rural settings while providing a regulatory framework for early warning of wildlife transmitted diseases.

A search for wild meat

Our research was based on data collected over the past 15 years and stored in WILDMEAT, an open-access evidence base for wild meat researchers and practitioners. It was launched to collate and standardise data from all available site-specific studies.

My colleagues used this data to publish the first regional assessment of hunting trends in sub-Saharan Africa. Using 83 studies carried out around African tropical forests, they confirmed that hunting had increased in the region since 1991. They found this could be linked to an increase in the use of guns and to the proportion of the harvested meat being sold, rather than consumed locally.

What was missing was an overview of where the sold meat was consumed.

We thus set out to compile the largest database of wild meat consumption ever assembled for central Africa. We made use of WILDMEAT and its large web of collaborators to gather data from 30 studies covering 252 locations in six central African countries. Overall, the database represented 12,453 individual households and 163,896 “recall events”, defined as occasions when the households reported the food they consumed in a given period between one and 365 days.

What we found

Our analysis showed that the highest consumption rates were in rural communities living in villages. These were followed by towns located in semi-rural areas not far from forest patches.

In contrast, we found lower rates of consumption in cities, and the lowest in major urban centres, particularly the countries’ capital cities.

We also obtained predictions of wild meat consumption across the region based on detailed information about forest intactness, remoteness, human population density and human development. This allowed us to identify hotspots of wild meat consumption across the entire region. By calculating what the estimated rates meant in nutritional terms we found that, on average, wild meat (the amount that a person here typically eats) contributes around 18% of the daily protein intake recommended by the World Health Organization. This percentage increased to about 20% in rural areas and it was close to 100% in remote regions of the Republic of Congo and Central African Republic.

These results underscored the major nutritional importance of wild meat for millions of Africans, many living in some of the most food-insecure regions of the continent.

Expanding demand

Another key issue shown by our analysis is the growing demand for wild meat coming from expanding provincial urban areas. In most of central Africa, these provincial cities and towns are not easy to access, so it’s difficult to get other protein sources such as chicken and fish there.

Because wild areas are nearby, though, wild meat is generally available at low prices. And law enforcement may be weaker than in larger cities. Our study identified these provincial towns as potential hotspots of wild meat consumption.

We also found that people living in major cities in central Africa still consume wild meat. This is for two main reasons.

First, it is perceived as healthier than imported domesticated frozen meats, characterised by the extensive use of antibiotics and unreliable maintenance of the cold chain during transport.

Second, consuming wild meat is seen as a way to maintain cultural traditions and sometimes acts as a status symbol. In a time of growing urbanisation we expect the demand for wild meat from urban areas to further increase, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the wildlife in the surrounding areas.

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