The first question that arises when you are asked if you would like to donate to a charity is “Why should I?” and despite the fact that this question sounds rather selfish, it is a good one. Why should you invest your money in this charity? For most, “it’s for a good cause” simply doesn’t cut it. Being part of a charity movement to raise money for orphaned chimpanzees, I am often asked why one should donate money to chimpanzees when world hunger and human disease have not yet been resolved. So far, our reasons have not been convincing enough for the more cynical. By doing a bit of research I will try and present the best argument possible as to why we should help young chimpanzees orphaned and homeless due to the bushmeat trade.
What is the bushmeat trade?
Bushmeat is the term referring to the meat of wildlife that lives in the forests of Africa, known as ‘the bush’, and includes endangered species such as elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, forest antelope. The bushmeat trade is the commercial trade of this meat.
Due to falling agricultural prices, increasingly scarce jobs and the rising demand for meat to feed the city population, people have turned to hunting. The hunting methods used in the bushmeat trade are unquestionably inhumane; illegal wire snares can amputate limbs leading to a slow, agonizing death for animals that wander into the trap. The handicapped animals, if they don’t die of blood loss or infection, may die from malnutrition if they are no longer able to find food.
Did you know that although the destruction of habitat is thought to be the primary threat to wildlife, it is in fact the commercial hunting for bushmeat that has become the most immediate threat to the future of wildlife in Africa and around the world?
Logging, mining and oil industries, as well as destroying tropical forest in Africa, have increased the demand for the commercial exploitation of wildlife in West and Central Africa because they attract thousands of workers and their families into remote extractive industrial areas who need to sustain themselves.
As well as being a crisis to endangered wildlife, the bushmeat trade also affects the indigenous and rural population who depend upon local bushmeat for food. It is also increasingly linked to deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, ebola and foot and mouth disease.
The bushmeat trade is not even seen as a problem to locals because the wildlife is a source of protein, religious and cultural linkage, and income for many families. Wild animals are seen as crop pests and dangerous. However what they do not realize is that the demand for bushmeat is larger than the rate of reproduction of the animals being hunted.
To what extent are chimpanzees suffering as a result of this?
As opposed to the two million chimpanzees that lived in the African wilderness in 1900, recent figures have indicated that there are less than 150 000 remaining. This means that the population has decreased by at least 1 850 000 chimpanzees. In one year, approximately 15 000 carcasses passed though the markets in Brazzaville (Congo), of which 293 were chimpanzees. Chimpanzees therefore accounted for two percent of all bushmeat. In recent times, chimpanzees have become extinct in four of the twenty five countries they previously inhabited. Orphaned chimpanzees whose parent’s have been killed for meat often end up as pets or are left in the forest to die.
What is the effect in areas affected by the bushmeat trade?
Each year, hunters remove about one million metric tons of bushmeat from the Congo Basin forests alone. The Congo Basin forests comprise one quarter of the world’s remaining rainforest, seventy percent of the remaining rainforest area in Africa and are the home to half of Africa’s wildlife species.
Quote: “Every square kilometer of forest that is logged represents the loss of habitat for one ape…once lost, the forest does not return.” (Marshall, A.J., Holland Jones, J., and Wrangham, R. (2000). “The Plight of the Apes: A Global Survey of Great Ape Populations”. A briefing prepared for representatives George Miller & Jim Saxton. p.16.)
The bushmeat trade is a huge threat for endangered species like chimpanzees. Support Jane Goodall's cause by signing the petition on her website: http://community.janegoodall.org/bushmeat-petition/
