Wild animals are an important food source for people across the world but there is growing evidence in tropical forests that the offtake is unsustainable and populations of many species are under threat. There are numerous accounts of bushmeat hunting from Asia, South America and mainland Africa but relatively few from Madagascar.
Many of Madagascar's wild animal species are protected from hunting and cannot therefore make a legal contribution to livelihoods. Our projects that deal with hunting of protected species can be found here.
A great many other animals, including frogs, birds, bats and tenrecs can be legally hunted as game and they potentially provide a sustainable source of income and protein for many people. In a project funded by the Darwin Initiative our sustainable bushmeat team is currently addressing four main areas.
- investigating how traditional exploitation methods and taboo contributed to sustainability and understanding the impact of their decline
- determine whether environment professionals and enforcement officers are well enough informed to implement the legislation regarding commercial hunting
- working with communities to produce sustainable and legal bushmeat products of non-threatened species for local consumption
- drawing attention to species that are threatened with extinction partly because of high and unsustainable levels of hunting, and developing initiatives with local communities and the authorities to reduce or prevent these harvests
