Wildlife Sustainability and Human Food Security in Cameroon, Central Africa

Concerns about the sustainability of wildlife hunting, particularly in Central Africa, have dominated the scientific literature on wildlife utilization. Only more recently have researchers began considering the human dependence on wildlife for both nutritional needs as well as sources of livelihoods. I begin with a systematic literature review of the wildlife harvesting literature, examining in detail the type of sustainability indicators predominating in the literature and their strengths and weaknesses. We find that indicator type, continent of study, species body mass, taxonomic group, and socioeconomic status of study site are important predictors of the probability of reported sustainability. Indicators relying on population-specific biological data are most often used in North America and Europe, while cruder estimates are more often used in Africa, Latin America, and Oceania. Our results highlight both the uncertainty and lack of uniformity in sustainability science. This presents a major gap in our ability to monitor wildlife and its use, since the importance of wildlife for human consumption is at its greatest precisely in the places where indicators used are the weakest. We point to future directions in the field.Subsequent field work was conducted in the humid forest zone of southeastern Cameroon in Central Africa. Cameroon is one of the six Congo Basin countries, and there has traditionally been great concern on the part of environmental conservation organizations over the level of wildlife hunting in the country. The first part of my field work was a pilot study to compare field methodologies for wildlife consumption by rural peoples. For wildlife surveys, I used distance sampling on wildlife transects to determine presence/absence and abundance of wildlife species in four different village sites that represent a gradient of human impact and environmental intactness. To evaluate human use of wildlife relative to economic status, I used household surveys with heads of households to ascertain relative wealth status and other household demographic and economic parameters as they relate to wildlife use and consumption. Finally, I tested methodologies for enumerating hunter activity and catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) as a potentially useful tool for monitoring the status of hunting sustainability. Results indicate that transect surveys do in fact detect increasing wildlife species in more rural, intact village sites, although sample sizes were too small to enumerate actual wildlife densities. Further, more rural households tend to both hunt and consume more wildlife; wildlife use in rural areas thus forms a more important source of total livelihood than for more urban households. Although humans have hunted wildlife for millennia, and it remains an important source of animal protein, there is increasing concern that `bushmeat' hunting, particularly in central Africa, is unsustainable. We explore the role that wildlife and alternative meat sources play in the food security of human populations in southeastern Cameroon. We conducted a large, cross-sectional study in 24 village and town sites in southeastern Cameroon to evaluate the role of wildlife in human food security in a gradient from urban to rural households. Rural households are significantly more likely to rely on wildlife for animal protein, whereas urban households rely on significantly more domestic meat. Using generalized linear mixed modeling, we found significant associations between bushmeat hunting and consumption and positive effects on food security, highlighting the importance of wildlife to human security in the Congo Basin. We asked interviewees about most consumed and most preferred wildlife species; interestingly, there is a potential synergy between taste preferences and the more resilient species that are hunted.These results indicate that wildlife consumption plays an important role in human food security in the humid forest zone of southeastern Cameroon. Disappearance of wildlife would negatively impact the food security situation in the region, particularly in the forms of protein-energy malnutrition and iron deficiency. At present, there is little ability to maintain small animal husbandry due to the poor veterinary services throughout the region. I evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a `Heifer International' model extended to two of the ten provinces in Cameroon that make up the region where wildlife hunting is currently the most important form of animal protein, consisting of the Southern and Eastern provinces ( Regions ), which together have a population of about 1 million people. The Heifer International model would replace the animal protein traditionally taken from wildlife sources with a revolving micro-loan of livestock, that must be eventually passed on to neighbors. At a population density of around 8 people/km2, wildlife hunting is believed to be at least four times above maximum sustainable wildlife hunting rates, and therefore supplementary forms of animal protein need to come from elsewhere. Assuming administrative and training costs are included in the prices of the animals as estimated, a `Heifer International' model of small animal husbandry would be a cost-effective way to address protein-energy malnutrition and iron deficiency, as well as wildlife conservation concerns in this part of the world.