Bushmeat - Still A Very Real Problem

Just a few weeks ago, monkey carcasses were found in the luggage of a man who went through Customs at Dulles airport.  Bushmeat is illegal in the US, so the meat was confiscated and the man was let go. 

According to The Bushmeat Project website, "People pay a premium to eat more great apes each year than are now kept in all the zoos and laboratories of the world.  If the slaughter continues at its current pace, the remaining wild apes in Africa will be gone within the next fifteen to fifty years.  With them will vanish most of the equatorial rain forest, and the cultures of indigenous people who have lived there for millennia."

Some would argue that bushmeat is a necessary evil to feed starving human populations, yet the reality is that bushmeat is a health hazzard to those who consume it.

Many diseases can be transmitted cross-species.  Non-human primates (apes and monkeys) are susceptible to many of the same diseases humans are.

Hunting, butchering and eating bushmeat places humans at risk of contracting Ebola, HIV-AID and monkeypox.

Alternative solutions to answer the humanitarian food crisis in Africa need to be found. 

The Ministry of Animal Husbandry in Cameroon launched a hedgehog-breeding program in 2002 in an attempt to limit poaching.

Educating locals about the urgency to conserve their natural habitat and turning poachers into environmental protectors is another approach.  According to a report from the WWF, "hunting wildlife for meat is a greater immediate threat to biodiversity conservation than is deforestation."

The Uganda government is tackling its struggling agriculture and starvation by introducing Genetically Modified Crops in its farms, which could lead to future problems according to Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. 

Many efforts are made by many associations and governments to find an adequate solution to the food shortage in Africa; including African governments who want to bring an African solution to an African problem.