First Loggers, Then Bushmeat Hunters
Strip the Rainforests
BRONX, New York, April 23, 1999 (ENS) - Logging roads punched into formerly inaccessible rainforests have resulted in a bushmeat trade in wildlife described as "staggering" in a new report by the the Bronx Zoo based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Gorillas, elephants and other wildlife near logging roads are falling as the trees are cleared, the study found.
Animals like this Muntjac deer become cuts of meat for sale in the markets of Indonesia. (Photos courtesy WCS)
In tropical Africa, WCS estimates that the annual harvest of bushmeat exceeds one million metric tons - much of it the result of increased access to forests being logged.
"Logging has pulled the plug on tropical forest wildlife," says the study's lead author, Dr. John Robinson, WCS vice president for international programs. "Animals are now being sucked out along the newly constructed roads."
Published in the April 23rd issue of the journal Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the report shows that in the Congo hunting of wild game was three to six times higher in communities adjacent to logging roads than in roadless areas. Access into more than 23,000 square miles of formerly inaccessible areas each year is being opened by logging.
Even recent policies that seek to protect rain forests through "sustainable forestry," rather than outright protection, have unintentionally added to the bushmeat problem, Robinson's report found.
Logging the rainforest of Indonesia In the Malaysian state of Sarawak, in 1996, the wild meat trade was conservatively estimated to be more than one thousand tons per year, with almost all of the meat coming out on logging roads. Hunting by the logging companies themselves has also contributed to the slaughter of wild game, the report says. In 1996, workers in just one logging camp in Sarawak killed over 1,100 animals totaling 29 metric tons.
This loss of wildlife threatens the very forest itself. Removing wildlife such as elephants and tapirs that help regenerate trees through seed dispersal jeopardizes the forest's ability to sustain
itself. Other effects include loss of protein sources for local people who have relied on subsistence hunting of wild game for centuries.
According to the report, the ability of the industry to sustain its logging activities will depend on acknowledging that current logging practices are rarely sustainable in terms of trees themselves, let alone in terms of the forest animals, and to change its current practices. Macaques often fall victim to the Iban hunters of Indonesia, who then profit from the demand for bushmeat.
The Wildlife Conservation Society has called on the logging companies - often the only institutional presence in remote forests - to provide leadership by reducing their role in the explosion of bushmeat in logged areas, as well as national legislation to limit hunting of wild game. Some laws have already been enacted. Last year, working with WCS, Sarawak passed legislation that involved logging companies by banning the commercial sale of bushmeat.
"The situation is critical, but collaboration between logging companies and conservationists offers a way forward," Robinson said.
Source: Environment News Service (ENS) 1999. All Rights Reserved.
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