Study tracks hunting trends in Africa’s biodiverse forests
Alberto Leny, People Daily
January 29, 2025
Increased commercial hunting and associated depletion of large-bodied
wildlife in African tropical forests, is a source of critical environmental
concerns, a ground-breaking new study on wildlife hunting has revealed.
The study was published on January 7 in Nature Sustainability by lead
authors Daniel Ingram (Durrell Institute of Conservation of Ecology,
University of Kent), Katharine Abernethy (University of Stirling), John
Scharlemann (formerly University of Sussex), and Centre for International
Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) scientist Lauren
Coad.
The study’s findings seek urgent action to reverse the concerning trends,
according to Coad, co-author and scientist at the Nairobi-based CIFOR-ICRAF.
“Sustainable wildlife management solutions, coupled with continued
long-term monitoring, are urgently needed to preserve Central Africa’s
wildlife resources,” said Coad of the report whose findings were enabled by
advances in data availability and accessibility.
Several organisations collaborated in the CIFOR-ICRAF-supported study,
including the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Institut de
Recherche en Ecologie Tropicale (IRET).
It is the first study to explore the factors that influence wild animal
hunting patterns across African tropical forests in detail, and on a
regional scale.
Other than hunting, wildlife trade and tracking is a major environmental
and animal health concern, increasingly so in the climate change era.
With an estimated US$7-23 billion per year, wildlife tracking is the
world’s fourth most profitable clandestine market after tracking in
counterfeit goods, drugs and people, according to the Global Environment
Facility (GEF).
The hunting and consumption of wild animals is one of the principal ways by
which many zoonotic agents are transmitted to humans. The uncontrolled
hunting and consumption of wild animals poses great risks to hunters and
consumers alike.
The development of new urban areas and infrastructure for activities such
as mining facilitates smugglers and hunters’ access to wildlife.
Deadlier Encounters
Many wild animals are sold for their meat, skin, teeth (elephant tusks as
ivory), rhino horns or nails, or as pets and are raised in extremely
adverse and stressful conditions. They come into contact with each other
and humans in uncontrolled environments, making the emergence of infectious
diseases inevitable.
The research made extensive use of wildmeat.org, the largest compilation of
African hunting data to date, to explore the socio-cultural, economic and
landscape variables associated with wild animal hunting across 115
settlements in African tropical forests.
https://peopledaily.digital/news/study-tracks-hunting-trends-in-africas-biodiverse-forests