The answer to your questions that no one wants to discuss is human overpopulation. There are simply too many human animals on this planet. If we don’t slow down human population growth, we’ll be the only living things left on this rock. But not for long …

s.

Sheryl,

I can’t agree more. One species has decided to breed uncontrollably taking every available space for all the other species of this planet earth. Indeed we have gone beyond the earth carrying capacity it’s only technology that is holding us this far. But the effects of a population beyond carrying capacity have started showing - the natural disasters, early warnings to man to stop over-breeding! Soon (a few decades), nature will restore a balance and our population will come down crumbling. Unfortunately, we will have lost most of the key species and destroyed key life supporting systems that planet earth will never be a safe abode for human species again.

Mwenja

It’s really straightforward. With human populations in much of Africa doubling every 20 or 30 years the demand for food must rise. People have to eat, and as history has shown, damn the consequences. As others have pointed out, much of the bushmeat consumed in Africa is tasty, and in some areas preferred even when it costs more than beef or other domestic meat.

Then there are other layers. The bushmeat trade continues to thrive in other countries as visitors carry smoked meat to Europe and North America. Examples of this are documented in my new book The Trouble With Lions: A Glasgow Vet in Africa (see http://www.jerryhaigh.com for more about this book and my own blog on matters related to Africa and the human x livestock x wildlife matrix). The countries to which the meat is imported do not stand blameless. The EU members have been singularly slow to act on any kind of regulation to control the trade. Logging companies are implicated because they open up the forests. The mining of Coltan in the DRC and the consequences of this activity on the bushmeat trade harks back to the terrible days of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its non-fiction descendants. One of the most bizarre instances is evident in the USA where a Liberian woman fought her indictment on smuggling of primate meat from Africa on the grounds of religious freedom.