Protected areas, precluding direct natural resource utilisation, have long been perceived by governments and the wider international conservation community as a key strategy for wildlife and biodiversity conservation. The development of protected area legislation (much of it originating from when many tropical forest countries were under colonial administration) also brought about laws banning, or attempting to heavily regulate, hunting in a wide range of contexts outside protected areas.
Much of this legislation, although not exclusively, has been directed at rural (forest dwelling) people. Rural communities have therefore tended to bear locally significant socio-economic and cultural costs in foregoing legal access to forest wildlife and other natural resources. Preclusion has often led to resentment, resistance and thus a substantial amount of continued, albeit illicit, natural resource use – for example, bushmeat hunting.
While protected areas are an important and key strategy for biodiversity conservation, and despite the advent of increasingly sophisticated management models, their effectiveness in regulating the sustainability of the bushmeat trade has been, at best, mixed. This is particularly the case for countries in forest regions (for example, those of central and west Africa) where protected areas and natural resource law enforcement has been chronically under-resourced for decades. Bowen-Jones et al (2002) eloquently state in regard to their experiences in Africa:
'The existing bushmeat management systems in tropical Africa can usually be quite simply described. In most situations they are non-existent. Despite numerous attempts to put in place regulatory frameworks, often of an oppressive type, effective management by the state is, in most contexts, minimal to absent, and the offtake essentially uncontrolled. Such intervention as does occur primarily serves the purpose of generating and sustaining rent-seeking behaviour by lower-level officials, not of controlling the resource. Community-level management is scarcely any more frequent. The high costs and risk involved in attempting to manage fugitive resources - in the sense of resources which lack ownership until the point of capture - are often prohibitive.'
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While part of a viable solution in some countries - especially those pursuing innovative developments in natural resource management, protected areas and law enforcement policies in many other range states continue to inadequately address the lack of sustainability of bushmeat hunting. This is because protected areas and law enforcement policies often conflict directly with rural people’s livelihood strategies and needs. Brown and Williams (2003) note:
'Any attempt to resolve the bushmeat crisis must be judged against its ability to satisfy the livelihood needs of the rural population, particularly the poor. The strategies on offer often fail precisely because of their deficiencies in this regard.'
The increasing awareness of the significance and importance of direct forms of resource use, not least bushmeat hunting, to many rural people’s livelihoods, has resulted in a number of solutions being suggested. In the main these have sought to dissuade and reduce the frequency, intensity and reliance of people on bushmeat hunting for their livelihoods by offering alternative options:
 Domestic captive breeding of particular forest species - for example, cane rats, (Thryonomys swinderianus) and duiker (Cephalophus spp.) in Africa; the Agouti (Agouti paca) in South America - as a substitute to hunting wild species
The development of alternative income-earning opportunities – for example, craft production for the tourist market.
Both, although much vaunted, have been frequently unsuccessful as:
The substitution of bushmeat consumption with meat of domestic origin, involves a switch from a livelihoods-based activity involving poor young men (as hunters) and women (as traders and restaurateurs) to a capital-intensive industry benefiting quite a different social category of entrepreneurs. The economics of intensive livestock-rearing are often prohibitive for the smallholder and a class- or gender-switch is often implied, which defies both the conservation and economic logic.
Local communities have often, quite rationally, viewed alternative income-earning initiatives as supplementary. With little direct relationship or linkage to natural resource management developments, and for reasons similar to those above, these income-earning opportunities have often failed to engender the support of communities for changes towards more sustainable resource use practices. The search for alternative income-generating activities is thus open to criticism for its failure to address livelihoods imperatives. But, perhaps equally problematic, is the fact that it has shifted attention away from the search for models to actively manage the resource.
The sharing of protected area revenues with surrounding communities has often not met with the results anticipated as the group benefits from revenue sharing – such as a health clinic or school infrastructure development – have not sufficiently counter-balanced the individual opportunity costs foregone by individuals in their livelihoods in refraining from particular resource use practices – for example, bushmeat hunting. Moreover, as with alternative income generating initiatives, protected area revenue sharing (where it exists), has shifted attention away from the search for models to actively manage the resource.
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Protected areas and law enforcement policies have frequently failed as effective policy instruments in addressing the ecological sustainability of the bushmeat trade. While these policies are very likely to remain a central and important component of biodiversity conservation, other approaches must be found which begin to address the livelihood issues that are key to alleviating the ecological crisis of bushmeat hunting.
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Bibliography
Bowen-Jones, E., Brown, D. &
Robinson, E. 2002. Assessment of the solution orientated
research needed to promote a more sustainable bushmeat trade
in Central and West Africa. Report to the Wildlife
& Countryside Directorate, DEFRA, DETR, UK.
Brown, D. and Williams, A. 2003.
Some governance and livelihood issues relating to the
bushmeat trade. Paper submitted to the International
Forestry Research Conference.
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