Stirling research has underpinned extensive reform of wildmeat harvest and trade to improve sustainability in Gabon, a high biodiversity country, home to the world’s largest remaining populations of forest elephants, giant pangolins, and mandrills.
Issue
Unregulated harvesting of wildmeat (bushmeat) undermines rural food security and devastates wildlife and ecosystem function in the tropics.
Approach
By the early 2000s, research had shown that subsistence hunting had become unsustainable across the tropics, driving declines in wildlife, particularly populations of large, endangered species, and jeopardising rural food security.
To support the government of Gabon to address these problems, Stirling researchers led novel, large-scale research on consumption and use of wildlife to elucidate the socio-economic drivers of hunting and trade. This involved repeated national survey of consumption in >1000 households and of trade in 16 markets over 6 years, and following long-term hunter in 12 villages.
Impact
In 2018, the research led to Gabon testing new regulatory approaches in the field. Pilot sustainable bushmeat management programmes were put into effect in 2019 to monitor the food security of 8% of Gabon’s rural population. By 2024, evidence-based reforms built from this initiative will affect the wildlife use of the entire population of Gabon, approximately 2,200,000 people.
Research on the scale of hunting impacts on wildlife stimulated a national wildlife monitoring programme. Biomonitoring using methodologies developed by the research team is now deployed in the Gabon National Parks which cover 3 million ha (11%) of the country.
Responding to the research evidence on the detriment to rural societies of heavy biodiversity loss, the new 2019 Penal Code has significantly increased punishments for crimes reducing wildlife sustainability. Organised wildlife poaching now carries a sentence of 15 years imprisonment and penalties for hunting endangered species have increased from 6-month to 10-year maximum sentences.
The research has also led to new laws to reduce public health risk from novel zoonotic disease transmission. The evidence underpinned Gabon’s 2020 decision to prohibit domestic trade in pangolins, bats and primates and to include public health concerns in the 2020 Protected Species by-laws.
More information
Institution: Univeristy of Stirling
Researchers: Professor Katharine Abernethy, Robin Whytock, Daniel Ingram