Hunting. The riveting evidence of the current hunting showing how serious the threat is to the species and the ecosystem is impactful. There’s evidence that indicates that species that have an important function in the ecosystem, such as seed dispersers, and are being eliminated by overhunting, can lead to cascading alteration of the ecosystem. It can/does trigger numerous amounts of indirect effect, which alters the hunting population and the ecosystem. If wildlife keeps decreasing from forest ecosystem it could lead to the disruption of the ecological and evolutionary process, through the changes of species composition within the ecosystem and a reduction in biological diversity will be creating “Empty Forest” (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2011).
Empty forest refers to according to Wikipedia ‘an ecosystem that is void of large mammals’. Anyways, wildlife is primarily hunted for their meat, but there’s the time that they’re using for other things. For example, African great apes such as chimpanzees (Pan spp) or Gorilla (Gorilla spp) are hunted for their meat, but sometimes for medicines, pet trade, or even trophies. However, great apes are prohibited cross the countries to be pursuing, capturing, and kill. It is very challenging to manage the conversation in the area that keeps on being heavily hunted for bushmeat.
Hunting for many of these rural areas provides a very important source of income and sometime this income is more important than the trade of agricultural products. In South East Gabon villages, 15-72 percent of the household income comes from hunting and it was even higher in remote communities (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2011). In Cameroon, Lebialem, Wright, and Priston bushmeat is a major source of income with a 33 percentage. Hunter earns an average of 597 USD per year and 60 percent of their income comes from hunting (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2011). This is pretty much their only way of getting income “because there is no other way of making money”. So, if there aren’t jobs available locally hunting will be the reliable job to fall back to.
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The hunter is usually all men and there are types of hunters. For example, there are hunters that are opportunistic hunters, which mean that they only catch what is necessary and when the opportunity presents itself. Then there are specialized hunters that target specific wildlife for profit. There’s a study ‘A zoo-led study of the great ape bushmeat commodity chain in Cameroon’ that focus on the people involved in the whole transaction of bushmeat (ape-meat) within the rural areas mainly in the Camron. The study in a way touches the flow of ape meat to urban areas and to the member of wealth, but to a certain point for safety reasons. In this study, 61 percent of the hunter claim as opportunist hunter, 14 percent of specialized hunter and 25 percent of hunter refrained from categorizing themselves (Tagg, 2018). Hunting is usually practiced all year round even though hunter occupied agriculture, fishing, domestic farming, traditional healing, or they’re employed in nearby forest companies.
When hunting for great apes, hunter tends to use home-made shotguns or commercially produced twelve-bore guns (Tagg, 2018). Gun used for hunting is either given as a gift, purchased in the village, or passed down from generation. In this study, they also recorded the presence of ‘Simplex’ weapons, which is a specific type of weapon used for “big-game” hunting. This weapon is usually used for larger animals especially elephants (an endangered species). The main type of ammunition used was buckshot, is a shotgun ammunition that uses large metal pellets in the shotgun shell, also locally known as ‘two-zero’. They also use other cartridges, locally known as ‘one-zero’.
Once the hunter kills the wildlife in this case, the apes, the ape is butchered in the forest and then carried back to the village. This could be done with the help of porters which might be already paid to accompany a specialized hunter. Yet, there are other carriers involved with moving the bushmeat around such as bush taxis, buses, private cars, and even logging trucks. Porters usually are hired by a middleman which paid them with money or in some case with bushmeat. Since, it is illegal to trade bushmeat, specifically ape-meat, people have to develop undercover strategies to transport the produce without getting caught or arrested.
