Hunting & Wildlife Trade Program: An Overview

Hunting & Wildlife Trade Program: 
An Overview
Hunting and wildlife trade are critical threats to biodiversity in tropical forests throughout the world.  The problem has escalated dramatically in recent years due to opening up of the forests, often in the rush to exploit resources. Loggers and other resource extractors build roads into formerly inaccessible areas. These roads  become a major conduit for wildlife trade as outside hunters and traders flow in and wild meat and other wildlife products flow out. Hunting rates by local people rise as they hunt increasingly for sale as well as for subsistence, and as new roads facilitate access to better hunting technologies. Traders bring the hunted animals into town markets to sell the meat and any other body parts that will fetch a price.

The result is that, across the landscape, both inside and outside parks and reserves, people are harvesting wild species at ever-increasing rates. A voracious appetite for almost anything that is large enough to be eaten, potent enough to be turned into medicine, or lucrative enough to be sold, is stripping wildlife from wild areas -- leaving empty forests and an unnatural quiet. A further part of the dilemma is that tropical forest peoples across the globe still depend on wildlife for much of their protein. Hence, we must seek ways to ensure that their protein supply remains intact while pursuing ways to conserve the wildlife on which their way of life depends.

WCS Activities
WCS’ approach is to use science (“what is happening and why?”), and to work closely with partners in applying practical solutions on the ground. This in-depth knowledge is used to propose solutions that address the symptoms and the underlying causes of this vast increase in hunting and wildlife trade.

WCS is working with…

• local communities in the Peruvian Amazon, Guatemala, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Cameroon, DR Congo, Congo, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Sarawak, Malaysia. WCS studies hunting patterns, destinations of hunted animals, and the dependence on hunted wildlife for subsistence and cash. Furthermore, WCS develops ways to reduce hunting of all species to sustainable levels, e.g., through zoning of the habitat into hunting and no-hunting zones, long-term education, and co-management programs.
  
• timber companies to reduce logging-associated hunting and wildlife trade in Congo, Cambodia, Sarawak, and Gabon. Some methods to achieve this include: (i) preventing roads from being used for transporting wild meat by blocking outside hunters from entering and preventing company vehicles from being used to transport wild meat; and (ii) prohibiting hunting of endangered species in the concessions through enforcement and education.
  
• governments in Cambodia, Thailand, and Sarawak, Malaysia. For major, cross-sectoral action, government policies must be involved. The most developed program is in Sarawak (see Highlights).

Important Next Steps
Unsustainable hunting and wildlife trade may be the greatest threats to wildlife in tropical forests today; they also jeopardize the lifestyles, health, and cultural well-being of people living in tropical forests. Studying and addressing the issue in 22 countries world-wide, WCS has global programs to synthesize “lessons learned” and integrate them on the ground. WCS and all of its partners at local, national, and international levels must expand this program in width and depth to ensure the survival of species, the wider health of the ecosystems in which they live, and to prevent human malnutrition and cultural degradation in many tropical forest around the globe.

Related Links
Zoological Society of London
Bushmeat Crisis Task Force
TRAFFIC
CITES