THE Bactrian camel, armadillo and grey ox are among 300 species that could be hunted to extinction as millions of people in developing countries continue to rely on wild meat, it is claimed.
Research found some forests, grasslands and deserts in poorer nations now lack many native species and are becoming “empty landscapes”.
The commercial trade in wild meats – sold as delicacies in restaurants and markets – is further driving down numbers of threatened animals.
Demand for bushmeat means Javan and black rhinos, tapirs, pangolins and some types of bat may be among those wiped out, as are the lowland gorilla, bonobo and chimpanzee.
Experts from Stirling and Oregon State universities found only “bold moves” such as heavy financial penalties will deter poaching and mitigate the risk. They also called on governments to encourage their people to switch to alternative food sources to prevent the loss of key species.
Without such action, they say both local ecosystems and traditional ways of living face major disruption. Dr Katharine Abernethy of Stirling
University said: “More needs to be done to effectively address the threat of overhunting, especially in the Tropics. Millions of wild animals are harvested every year and this is highly unsustainable, putting both wildlife species and traditional livelihoods at risk.”
The research, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal, found there has been “little or no conservation progress” despite a number of major summits on protecting vulnerable species since 1996, when 40 species were listed as “critically endangered”.
More than 100 different animal types are threatened by hunting in south-east Asia, as are about 90 in Africa, 60 elsewhere in Asia, 40 in Latin America and 30 in Oceania.
Three of the total are “already possibly extinct”, including the kouprey, or grey ox, a forest-dwelling bovine animal from Cambodia thought to be related to the ancient auroch species.
The statuses of the Wondiwoi tree-kangaroo from Papua New Guinea, and little earth hutia, found on Cayo Juan Garcia island off Cuba, are also unknown. According to the report, an estimated 89,000 metric tonnes of meat worth $200 million dollars are taken from the Brazilian Amazon every year. In the Congo basin, exploitation rates of large mammals is thought to be five times higher.
The report says evidence points towards a mass extinction event, adding: “Unsustainable hunting for consumption and trade of wild meat (also known as bushmeat) by humans represents a significant extinction threat to wild terrestrial mammal populations.
“This global hunting crisis is a fundamentally distressing problem to address because it is intimately tied to human development challenges such as food insecurity, emergent disease risks, and land use changes. While many ethnic groups have hunted wildlife for subsistence over millennia, often with highly detrimental effects, the unsustainability of the practice has accelerated in many areas."
Abernethy said: “Bold moves like increasing poaching penalties, promoting sustainable food altern- atives, particularly in urban areas, and educating richer consumers, who do not need the meat for food sec- urity, on the threat to mammals that are hunted will go some way to alleviating the problem.”
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