Bushmeat
Meat hunted in tropical forests / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bushmeat is meat from wildlife species that are hunted for human consumption. Bushmeat represents a primary source of animal protein and a cash-earning commodity in poor and rural communities of humid tropical forest regions of the world.[1][2]
Bushmeat seen on the roadside in Ghana: includes cane rat, giant pouched rat, and red-flanked duiker. | |
Alternative names | Wild meat, wild game |
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Main ingredients | Wildlife |
The numbers of animals killed and traded as bushmeat in the 1990s in West and Central Africa were thought to be unsustainable.[3] By 2005, commercial harvesting and trading of bushmeat was considered a threat to biodiversity.[4] As of 2016, 301 terrestrial mammals were threatened with extinction due to hunting for bushmeat including non-human primates, even-toed ungulates, bats, diprotodont marsupials, rodents and carnivores occurring in developing countries.[5]
Bushmeat provides increased opportunity for transmission of several zoonotic viruses from animal hosts to humans, such as Ebolavirus and HIV.[6][7][8]