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 t's
not just trees being removed from the world's rainforests, but
staggering numbers of gorillas, elephants and other wildlife,
which are being killed and sold as "bushmeat," according
to a report by the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society
(WCS), published in the April 23rd issue of the journal Science.
 WCS
says that increased logging in tropical forests has spiked markets
for wild game by providing access into more than 23,000 square
miles of formerly inaccessible areas each year through new logging
roads. In Congo for example, hunting of wild game was 3-6 times
higher in communities adjacent to logging roads than in roadless
areas. Even recent policies that seek to protect rain forests
through "sustainable forestry," rather than outright
protection, have unintentionally added to the bushmeat problem.
In tropical
Africa, WCS estimates that the annual harvest of bushmeat exceeds
one million metric tons much of it the result of increased access
to forests being logged. In the Malaysian state of Sarawak, in
1996, the wild meat trade was conservatively estimated to be
more than one thousand tons per year, with almost all of the
meat coming out on logging roads.
"Logging
has pulled the plug on tropical forest wildlife," says the
study's lead author, Dr. John Robinson, WCS vice president for
international programs. "Animals are now being sucked out
along the newly constructed roads."
Hunting
by the logging companies themselves has also contributed to the
slaughter of wild game, according to WCS. In 1996, workers in
just one logging camp in Sarawak killed over 1,100 animals totaling
29 metric tons.
This
loss of wildlife threatens the very forest itself, says WCS.
Removing wildlife such as elephants and tapirs that help regenerate
trees through seed dispersal jeopardizes the forest's ability
to sustain itself. Other effects include loss of protein sources
for local people who have relied on subsistence hunting of wild
game for centuries.
According
to the report, the ability of the industry to sustain its logging
activities will depend on acknowledging that current logging
practices are rarely sustainable in terms of trees themselves,
let alone in terms of the forest animals, and to change its current
practices.
WCS
has called on the logging companies often the only institutional
presence in remote forests to provide leadership by reducing
their role in the explosion of bushmeat in logged areas, as well
as national legislation to limit hunting of wild game. Some laws
have already been enacted. Last year, working with WCS, Sarawak
passed legislation that involved logging companies by banning
the commercial sale of bushmeat.
"The
situation is critical, but collaboration between logging companies
and conservationists offers a way forward," Robinson said.
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