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May 17, 2005

If You Can't Give A Man A Fish, He May Resort To Lion...

Many people seem to think that distasteful subjects like the bush-meat trade as an African problem. What they fail to realize is that every thing we take from Africa tends to have a profound effect. Fishing has long been a way many poor countries have been able to feed themselves. Foreign fishing vessels from the European Union find fishing off the waters of Africa too tempting to pass up. Often they're given carte blanche in terms of quotas, and overfishing has become a serious problem. Now Science magazine has published a study that shows a strong link between overfishing off the coast of Africa and the increase in the bush-meat trade. This is not just a matter of hurting the small fishing communities along the African coast. Large fish often feed the locals there, but smaller fish like anchovies and sardines are often dried and traded to inland communities for rice, corn, bananas and timber. In short, overfishing has far-reaching economic effects in these poor African countries.

So next time you're eating tuna at a bistro in Paris or Rome or London, consider where that fish may have come from. By making wise choices on the menu, you can help avoid supporting overfishing of threatened fish species, not to mention exploitation of third world countries and the perpetuation of the bush-meat trade, which affects lions, leopards, hyenas, zebra, monkeys, hippos, giant hogs, and antelopes!

The European Union's taste for West African seafood may be causing more Africans to kill wild animals for food—including lions, leopards, and hippopotamuses—a new study suggests.

Researchers say dwindling fish stocks due to trawling by foreign fishing fleets is a key cause of the increase in the "bush meat" trade in Ghana.

The study, published tomorrow in the journal Science, claims to be the first to provide strong evidence of a link between local fish supply and bush-meat hunting.

...

"If people aren't able to get their protein from fish, they'll turn elsewhere for food and economic survival," he said. "Unfortunately the impacts on wild game resources are not sustainable."

More at: African Bush-Meat Trade Linked to EU Overfishing

See Also: "Bushmeat Hunting, Wildlife Declines, and Fish Supply in West Africa" in Science - 12 November 2004 Issue.

Posted by sorsha at May 17, 2005 7:27 PM