I have investigated aspects of the bush meat trade in Africa for the last six years. I no longer have any doubt that the increasing commercialisation of this trade is today the biggest threat to the survival of many species in West and Central Africa. The great apes are no exception. Many parts of their range are being logged. The construction of logging roads has allowed the bush meat trade to go commercial. In consequence, entire gorilla and chimp populations are eaten into extinction, at a rate of thousands of animals a year.
Why, at this stage, are the scientific and conservation communities concentrating on rather theoretical issues, while the very existence of the subjects under discussion is under serious threat?
I have interviewed some 200 commercial and subsistance hunters, and have documentated an equal number of orphan ape scenarios. This, combined with the research data available on the quantities of bush meat consumed, constitutes overwhelming evidence that the bush meat trade is one of the the biggest, if not the biggest, primate conservation issues facing Africa today.
Two years ago I joined up with the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), with the view of publicizing the increasing commercialisation of the bush meat trade and its impact on chimpanzee, bonobo and gorilla populations.
As a professsional photographer, I had assumed it would be easy to get the media interested and to get the conservation community to come on board to verify the facts. Far from it! The February 1996 issue of American Outdoor Photographer includes a feature outlining my frustrations in dealing with the print media.
The electronic media were more forthcoming. A television documentary I convinced a South African network to produce comes close to presenting the message I feel needs to be told. (Copies are available to readers who can bear footage of silverbacks being cut up into manageable pieces and chimpanzee mothers being smoked on the same rack as their offspring.)
What I hope we established with these productions is the fact that the killing of gorillas and chimpanzees for their meat is a daily occurrance and that we are no longer dealing with isolated cases. Some members of the conservation community termed the inital news reports we released as sensationalizing the issue. The evidence compiled since makes it absolutely clear that thousands of animals are involved every year. A point in case is Joseph, a commercial hunter we have interviewed on camera on three occassions. He states that he and his two pygmy assistants kill approximately 50 great apes annually. The first time we talked to him, his men were cutting up a silverback gorilla; the second time he was smoking two chimps; and this last time he was smoking a silverback and a baby gorilla. He told us that for the next two weeks he would stay in his forest camp to try to supply the Christmas demand for bush meat, which included orders for gorillas, just like some people order a turkey or goose for Christmas.
Some members of the conservation community also called our approach counterproductive because the African governments concerned prefer quiet diplomacy.. Diplomacy has been triedbut has it succeeded? Not based on our evidence! Not even close! The slaughter of great apes and other primates is today higher than ever, and is no longer sustainable in many regions. Correspondingly, the flow of orphans is increasing, as well, except where population densities have dropped to the point that commercial hunting is no longer viable.
Elephant steaks
In the Congo Republique, where many of the international conservation organisations have their regional base and where three great ape sanctuaries have been established, the Prime Minister went on television last year and announced that all school children should spend their holidays hunting and fishing. This was said outside of hunting season. Elephant steaks were openly advertised and sold in the country's most upscale supermarket. According to the bush meat traders in the Cameroon, their parliament two years ago officially abandoned a six-month season closed to hunting. In this context, what hope is there in the quiet diplomatic approach?
One established conservation organisation with offices in the countries concerned rejected my feature for their magazine on the grounds that it might affect their representatives in the field. Scientific research often seems to take priority.
National Geographic relegated a bush meat piece to their Earth Almanac column, and then postponed it for several months after one picture they planned to use supposedly clashed with a chimpanzee-linked story that ran in Decemer 1995.
Individual cases of smuggling of great apes or other primates still seem to be the main concern of most animal welfare and conservation groups. The fact that we have evidence that for each great ape who might get smuggled, possibly a hundred die a miserable death, tied to a post in some village, gets little attention. None of the hunters I interviewed indicated that capturing baby apes was an issue. It is virtually impossible to shotgun a mother and not injure the baby as well. I have recorded several cases of mothers being "prepared" at the same time as their offspring. I photographed a frozen baby chimp in a bush meat freezer in Yaounde. There were no visible injuries and the trader assumed she had been strangled. Orphaned apes can be found everywhere, and generally their price alive is only slightly higher than their meat value.
Is it justifiable to turn the smuggling of any orphaned great ape into headline news, letting the world belive that the demand for babies is a major concern while the plight of the hundreds of unsmuggled orphans is ignored?
Of course there are no easy solutions. However, the ivory crises of the late1980s proved that world opinion can make a difference. International outcry is needed. Many of the countries concerned Cameroon, the Congo Republique, the Central African Republic and, to a lesser extent, Zaire, Gabon and Equatorial Guineabadly need whatever international aid they can get. Aid is now closely linked to human rights issuesbut what about the rights of the great apes and other primates?
I am still looking for a single documented case of a successful prosecution of an individual for infringing upon an African hunting law. Those laws that exist amount to lip service. I strongly suspect that the recent move to prosecute several Zairean mountain gorilla poachers, who allegedly massacred an Italian family that happened upon them, is just an exercise in public relations. Often I have recorded gorilla and chimpanzee skulls worked into carved statues, offered for sale in Goma and Bukavu. It would appear that most chimpanzee orphans who arrived in the last few years in Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda came from Zaire and were mere byproducts of the bush meat trade. I have not heard of Zaire taking any measures except where the international community has applied pressure.
Good governance is supposedly a criteria for the granting of foreign aid. Looking after one's natural and national resources supposedly represents another such criteria. During our latest documentary shoot we interviewed one of Cameroon's top wildlife officials, who went on record stating that the army and police were heavily involved in the bush meat trade and could not be called on to help enforce the laws.
A French logging company executive went on record stating that the industry had gone into a free for all approach to logging and that nothing had been learned from what happened in the Ivory Coast, Liberia, etc. He predicted the total destruction of wildlife within the next 20 years in all the commercially logged areas.
Is there any time left for theoretical debates on great ape rights? Would the chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas of Africa not benefit more if the combined talent, energy and influence of the scientific community now engaged in the Great Ape Project took some time to devise a strategy on how to best keep these animals out of the cooking pots?
I trust that this essay will be accepted in the spirit it is written. I accept that debate over cultural sensitivity might result from it.; I am convinced that the controversy will help to get the facts out.
(Karl Ammann, of Nanyuki, Kenya, may be contacted by telephone at 254-176-22448; by fax at 254-176-32407; or by e-mail at kamman@ATTMail.com.)
(ANIMAL PEOPLE is a nonprofit monthly newspaper providing independent professional coverage of all the news about animal protection, from animal rescue to zoological conservation. If you give to help animals, you'll especially want our annual report on how each leading group spends donations ($3.00). Subscriptions, U.S. or foreign, are $22/year, $35/2 years, or $50/three years, to POB 960, Clinton, WA 98236, USA. We'll send a free sample issue to anyone who provides a postal address.)