Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
as trophy animals. And in most low-income societies of Asia, Africa, and Latin
America, foraging provides an important food quality boost, particularly in terms
of high-quality animal protein, vitamins, and minerals. While the hunting and col-
lecting of temperate zone animals have usually been limited to birds and mammals
(frogs and snails are the two notable exceptions), tropical foraging includes as well
many insects, their larvae, snakes, and lizards. During the rainy season such wild
foods could make up about half the total food consumed by farmers in Thailand's
central northeast (Price 1997).
There are no reliable larger-scale quantii cations of these harvests: food acquired
for direct domestic consumption is obtained by opportunistic collecting and hunting,
and all but small shares of wild (and often illegally killed) meat (fresh, dried, or
smoked) and plants are sold in local markets, also beyond the reach of any statistical
monitoring. A rare estimate for Ghana put the total annual consumption of wild
meat at no less than 385,000 t during the 1990s (Ntiamoa-Baidu 1998); that would
prorate to a bit over 20 kg/capita, or at least twice the average supply of all other
meat (beef, pork, goat, poultry) attributed to the country by FAO's food balance
sheets (FAO 2011b). Usually the only information we have refers to sales or con-
sumption rates in specii c markets or regions during the limited periods of time
when these food supplies were studied by outsiders. One of the i rst studies of this
kind was Assibey's (1974) account of wild meat offered for sale at a single market
in Ghana's capital: at least 160 t of meat during a period of 18 months.
A review by de Vos (1977) found that in many areas of Africa and Latin America
wild meat supplied at least 20% of all animal protein, and nearly 20 years later
Njiforti (1996) coni rmed that conclusion for northern Cameroon, where the respon-
dents to his study consumed annually almost 6 kg of bush meat (North African
porcupine and guinea fowl being the preferred species), representing 24% of the
animal protein intake in the region. Hunting in West and Central Africa is strongly
market-oriented: many urban residents are recent arrivals with a traditional taste
for wild meat, and besides many professional hunters there are many villagers who
hunt to supplement their limited income: Kümpel et al. (2010) found that in rural
Equatorial Guinea, about 60% of poor to middle-income households were engaged
in hunting for urban markets. Bifarin, Ajibola, and Fadiyimu (2008) found that in
the forests of Nigeria's Ondo state, hunters averaged more than 140 kg of big game
(buffalo, bushbucks, and duikers) every month and nearly 90 kg of smaller species
(mainly cane and African giant rats).
Illegal hunting is common even in the relatively best policed national
parks, including the Serengeti and partially protected areas surrounding the park
