Recipes for Survival_English_tcm46-28192

Primate bushmeat:current situation4.1 IntroductionUnsustainable hunting levels have been observed in a large diversity of species (seesection 3), but it was the trade in primates, and great apes in particular, that broughtattention to the bushmeat crisis during the 1990s. Apes provided a jumping-on pointfor conservation groups to get involved in bushmeat and begin campaigning andimplementing measures to curb the problem.The fact that Western lowland gorillas were hunted for meat was well known (see forexample Harcourt and Stewart, 1980), but drew little attention from the conservationcommunity. It was the ape orphans of the bushmeat trade that first attracted theattention of NGOs and the media in the late 1980s. The efforts by certain expatriatesto save young gorillas and chimpanzees, and the shipping of some of these rescuedapes to Western zoos led the International Primate Protection League to questionwhether this was trade under the guise of ape-rescue. An investigation in Congo(Redmond, 1989) concluded that the orphaned apes were indeed a by-product of thebushmeat trade, although infants would certainly be captured to order if anyoneexpressed an interest in buying one. The use of ape fingers and other body-parts intraditional African medicine was also highlighted. Rescued gorilla infants at that timesuffered a mortality rate of 80 per cent, but chimpanzees were more resilient; theimages of starving chimpanzees in the now defunct Parc Zoologique de Point Noireprompted Jane Goodall to begin her long-term support to chimpanzee orphans in Congo.Much has changed in the intervening 15 years, but ape numbers continue to fall and itremains to be seen whether the newly adopted Global Strategy for the Survival of GreatApes will reverse the trend. On a more positive note, however, many of the great aperange states have developed (or are developing) National Great Ape Survival Plans andmost have signed the UN Declaration on Great Apes, agreed in Kinshasa on 9thSeptember 2005. This will have wider repercussions than just improving the survivalchances of great apes. Under the paradigm of ‘umbrella species’, it is believed thatconservation efforts focused on apes and their habitat have benefited non-primatespecies also hunted for food.PRIMATE BUSHMEAT4Opposite:Infant chimpanzeerescued frombushmeat tradeduring the war inLiberia45© Ian Redmond