The bushmeat trade has long been recognised as a threat to wildlife populations around the world. Its impacts are now becoming obvious in African savannahs. A growth in the African human population has lead to increased demand for bushmeat, from both remote areas, where it is cheaper than alternative meat options, and cities, where bushmeat is considered a luxury item and hence more expensive than the alternatives! This increased demand has lead to hunting in protected and wild areas. Predators, such as cheetahs, not only have direct competition for food from hunters, but are also common casualties of wire snare traps, the method of choice for catching bushmeat, due to the cheap and easily assessable materials required to make and set them. This method is also difficult to control, unselective and extremely wasteful. Cheetahs, which are already at risk of extinction, with some evidence suggesting up to a 90% decrease in the wild population in the last decade, are also impacted upon by this practice. Wildlife being hunted and killed or predators leaving the savannah in search of food, has led to a phenomenon known as ‘Empty Savannah Syndrome’, where there are savannah areas with loss of biodiversity, disappearances of many species, and complete collapse of wildlife populations.
“The scale and apparent ubiquity of the threat posed by illegal hunting suggests that without urgent intervention to address the issue, wildlife resources will be lost across large areas of the continent, with severe ecological, economic and social impacts” (Lindsey et al. 2012 – Illegal hunting & the bush-meat trade in savanna Africa: drivers, Impacts & solutIons to address the problem)