Abstract:
The prevalence and impacts of the illegal trade in
bushmeat are under appreciated in Southern Africa, despite
indications that it constitutes a serious conservation
threat in parts of the region. Bushmeat trade has emerged
as a severe threat to wildlife conservation and the viability
of wildlife-based land uses in Zimbabwe during a period of
political instability and severe economic decline. We
conducted a study around Save´ Valley Conservancy in
the South-East Lowveld of Zimbabwe to investigate the
dynamics and underlying causes of the bushmeat trade,
with the objective of developing solutions. We found that
bushmeat hunting is conducted mainly by unemployed
young men to generate cash income, used mostly to
purchase food. Bushmeat is mainly sold to people with
cash incomes in adjacent communal lands and population
centres and is popular by virtue of its affordability and
availability. Key drivers of the bushmeat trade in the
South-East Lowveld include: poverty, unemployment and
food shortages, settlement of wildlife areas by impoverished
communities that provided open access to wildlife
resources, failure to provide stakes for communities in
wildlife-based land uses, absence of affordable protein
sources other than illegally sourced bushmeat, inadequate
investment in anti-poaching in areas remaining under
wildlife management, and weak penal systems that do
not provide sufficient deterrents to illegal bushmeat hunters.
Each of these underlying causes needs to be addressed
for the bushmeat trade to be tackled effectively. However,
in the absence of political and economic stability, controlling
illegal bushmeat hunting will remain extremely difficult
and the future of wildlife-based land uses will remain
bleak.