Category Archives: Bushmeat

Animals killed in the bush for food. Bushmeat trading is one of the main sources of cash for people in TL2. Traders and hunters come from 100s of kilometers to exploit TL2 forests.

Can Congo’s Forest Support Pygmy Hunter-Gathers?

Pygmies do not now live independently in the Ituri Forest, but did they sometime in the past?  For the last few centuries they have lived in a complex reciprocity with agriculturalists. The Mbuti pygmies provide meat, various forest products and other services in exchange for manioc flour, bananas, tubers and rice.  No forests in [...]

In the 1970s: Bushmeat Trade Manipulates Pygmy Economy and the Fate of the Forest.

In the 21st century the pygmy net-hunt has become a major source of bushmeat leaking out of the Okapi Reserve in Congo’s northeast Ituri Forest.  The Mbuti pygmies are ineluctably depleting the Reserve’s animal resources, their only resources, by hunting deeper and deeper into the forest.  Outside traders pack their wares deep into forest hunting [...]

Bushmeat 10: Did the Bridge Collapse Create a Bushmeat Boom for Mbuti Pygmies?

The disaster:
On 24 November, 2009, a Kenya-bound truck with two trailers carrying illegal wood from the Ituri Forest broke through the one lane bridge crossing the east branch of the Epulu River, at the Okapi Reserve headquarters.  Vehicle traffic was forced to halt.  Stalled vehicles and passengers in transit accumulated along the road and camped [...]

BUSHMEAT 9: A Congo Chronology of Bushmeat

Is it possible to stop Congo’s massive commercial hunting before the forests are empty of animals?  Maybe, and maybe it is easier than we thought.
Here is the story:
What we saw 2007 – early 2009:
During 2007 and 2008, the TL2 project inventoried intact forest — with low, or no  human population — between the Tshuapa and [...]