Political crises in central Africa are causing food shortages which mean gorillas are now on the menu and their numbers are dwindling, writes Iva Pocock
Few westerners have experienced the realities of the African bushmeat trade as closely as Cork woman Brigid Barry. A 26-year-old tropical conservationist, she has spent months accompanying hunters on their daily forays into the forests of Equatorial Guinea in central Africa; she has watched as they massacre troops of endangered monkey species and stood alongside as they empty their traps of maggot-ridden prey, long since starved to death; she has even been surrogate mother to a baby chimp orphaned after hunters killed its lactating mother.
Witnessing such destruction is a challenge, especially if, like Barry, you are passionate about the great apes (our closest biological relations) and are acutely aware of the ecological crisis posed by the hunting of wildlife for meat, so-called bushmeat.
"When you have to wash in a river of monkey guts you do ask 'what am I doing?'", says Barry. "But I was there to monitor and not to stop them. If I'd gone in there and said you can't do this they'd have kicked me out of the forest." Barry's gruesome task was part of a Zoological Society of London research project into how the bushmeat trade operates in Equatorial Guinea, the tiny west African state most recently in the headlines after allegations of Mark Thatcher's involvement in a planned coup.
As part of a wider EU-funded project, the research findings will hopefully feed back into policy proposals for tackling a trade which threatens species such as the mountain gorilla and chimpanzees with extinction.
"Historically the greatest threat to the African great apes would have been habitat loss and deforestation. Now the biggest primary threat is the bushmeat trade," says Barry.
The figures are stark: fewer than 150,000 chimpanzees remain in the African wilderness where one to two million lived a century ago and just 359 mountain gorillas were counted in 2000 in their only native habitat, the Virunga Mountains of central Africa.
Bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees), found only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, number somewhere between 10,000 and 25,000. All are already classified by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species as critically endangered, and within 15 years may only exist in captivity, according to leading primatologist Dr Jane Goodall.
The great apes make up only a small fraction of the trade but they are slow breeders and cannot withstand even very low levels of hunting.
"A chimp breeds only once every three years so if you kill a group they have very little chance of recovery," explains Barry.
The result is that many forests, which just a few years ago were teeming with large wildlife now suffer "empty forest syndrome", says Barry. "The hunters used to tell me that 10 years ago there were monkeys crawling on their roofs and that they could walk in to the forest and have their food in a night. Now they must walk for a week."
SO WHY HAS commercial hunting of wild animals proliferated to such an extent that it threatens species already teetering on the brink of extinction? Rapid commercialisation and escalation of industry such as logging and mining are partly responsible, according to the Jane Goodall Institute.
By cutting roads into previously impenetrable tracts of rainforest, the loggers are providing transport routes for hunters to get their animal haul to urban areas.
"The people in the forests then have an instant market. They can easily take the food to the cities," says Barry.
The loggers, many of them from the Philippines or Malaysia, are also themselves another ready market.
"I visited a logging company to hitch a lift in a really inaccessible area. There were 150 loggers but don't fool yourself into thinking the company gave them food. They've to find their own, so they buy bushmeat," says Barry.
From her experience of traipsing the forests of Equatorial Guinea and of spending time in villages close to the forests, Barry says the people do not want to be hunting commercially as they know it is unsustainable.
International figures suggest the bushmeat crisis threatens the food security of 150 million of the world's poorest people living in forest communities. But given their poverty levels, they have little choice.
The cultural culinary preferences of the growing number of urban dwellers, who consider wild meat the best source of protein, ensure that bushmeat has a ready market.
Barry experienced this living in the city with an African family who were considered middle class because despite having no running water they had electricity once a week and lived in a concrete house. "Six out of seven nights a week they would have fresh bushmeat in the pot."
This culture is reflected in the lack of political action to tackle the bushmeat trade in states such as Equatorial Guinea, where corruption is rife - in January 2003, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, in power since 1979, was sworn in for another seven year term following an election described by the European Parliament as "neither free nor fair".
Throughout the Congo Basin, general political and economic instability also feeds the bushmeat crisis, disrupting attempts to tackle the complex problem.
"I was supposed to go to the Congo in June to the Virunga Mountains to work with chimps but unfortunately civil war broke out again so the research was put on hold," says Barry.
In the meantime she urges people concerned about the effects of the bushmeat trade to be discerning about the paper and wood products they purchase and to choose products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. "Offices use an outrageous amount of paper and it could be coming from the rainforests of Africa." In addition, she says many membership organisations, which need individual's support, do good work, especially in conservation education in African countries.
ALMOST TWO MILLION people signed a petition to the European Parliament organised by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria supported by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The petition called for an EU Bushmeat strategy plan aimed at conserving biodiversity and protecting those species threatened by the bushmeat trade.
In response, Prionsias De Rossa MEP drafted a resolution which was overwhelmingly endorsed by the parliament in January 2004.
"It is clear that there is a close link between poverty, economic and social development, and bushmeat consumption. That is why the issue must be addressed in the context of overall development strategy and poverty alleviation," says De Rossa.
To date the European Commission has taken on board some of De Rossa's suggestions but is "not convinced that a specific action plan would be the best way to address the bushmeat crisis".
It would prefer bushmeat issues to be "properly addressed" in the EU strategy for integrating environment into economic and development co-operation and the Biodiversity Action Plan, both of which are being reviewed this year.
Other personal choices can help stem the bushmeat crisis and reduce the chances of a world in which the only living great apes are in captivity, says Brigid Barry.
If you are on holiday in a tropical country, don't pay to have your photo taken with an ape and certainly don't buy an orphaned baby chimp, even if you are overwhelmed with pity for the miserable creature staring up at you with almost-human eyes.
If you do, the vendors will just head back into the forest to orphan another, bringing the species one step closer to extinction.