Commercial Hunting Threatens Survival of African Animals,
Scientists Warn
Aquarium Specialists Hold Conference Here
Copyright 2001 St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
Inc
September 7, 2001
Runaway commercial hunting of wild apes, elephants and other animals is emptying African rain forests of wildlife and pushing some of the world's most wondrous creatures to the brink of extinction, scientists said Thursday in St. Louis.
"Our closest relatives are at great risk and we need to do something," said Michael Hutchins, director of conservation and science for the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.
Hutchins outlined the so-called bushmeat crisis in an interview during the first day of the association's 77th annual conference. The conference, which runs through Tuesday, is bringing 1,500 zoo and aquarium professionals to St. Louis. Specialists on apes, tigers, elephants, leopards and other jungle animals met at the Radisson and Adam's Mark hotels downtown to discuss conservation problems of each species. Today the conference will focus more broadly on wildlife conservation and educating zoo visitors.
The Washington-based association serves as headquarters for the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force. That's a consortium of organizations that banded together in 1999 to fight commercial hunting of wildlife for sale as meat. The St. Louis Zoo is among the members.
The bushmeat problem centers in seven west and central African countries with tropical rain forests, Hutchins said. Hunters take gorillas, chimps, monkeys, elephants and other animals illegal to kill. They load the meat on trucks, which carry it to markets in the cities.
"Millions of tons of wild animals are taken and sold each year in wild meat markets," he said. "In very quick order many of these species will be driven to extinction."
The task force is developing a plan to help African countries enforce their laws against bushmeat hunting in protected areas. Another key aim is educating African biologists and rural villagers alike about the crisis.
"One of the problems is that logging companies are opening places in the forest to hunting that have never been hunted before," Hutchins said.
The St. Louis Zoo helps attack the problem in several ways, said Ingrid Porton, primate curator at the Zoo.
The Zoo gives financial support to the task force. And the Zoo plans to increase its education efforts on the bushmeat crisis.
For example, the Zoo's Fragile Forest exhibit, scheduled to open in 2004, will incorporate information developed by the task force.
"When people know about something like this, they can advocate for a solution," Porton said. "That's where political will comes in."
Last year Congress passed the Great Ape Conservation Act, which authorized $5 million for an ape conservation program. But Congress appropriated only $750,000.