Bushmeat Trafficking

The unsustainable and often unlawful commercial hunting and trade of wildlife, most often mammals but also birds and reptiles, for human consumption, documented most extensively across tropical forest regions of Africa. While bushmeat has long served as a primary source of animal protein and income in poor rural communities, unlawful commercial harvesting for wider trade has placed severe hunting pressure on more than a thousand animal species; as of 2016, 301 terrestrial mammals, including primates, ungulates, bats and pangolins, were considered threatened with extinction due to hunting for bushmeat, a situation conservationists have termed the bushmeat crisis. Beyond its conservation impact, the trade carries significant public health risk, since handling and consuming wild-caught meat has been linked to the transmission of zoonotic diseases including Ebola and HIV.