Bushmeat Working Group Activities

To get the ball rolling I would like to discuss the following:

Bushmeat is a high value commodity, a prestige product that falls somewhere between everyday foods (cereals, tubers, oil, fish) and gold/precious stones in the way it offers a means of underpinning subsistence livelihoods on the one hand and strategies of wealth accumulation on the other. It also constitutes a complex area from species that are legal prey harvested from areas legally open to hunting/trapping, through to protected species harvested from protected areas with shoot-to-kill policies.

1. We need to understand at the local and regional levels species, scales and trends of bushmeat harvesting, trade and use (e.g. John Fa's) through
   1. hunter behaviour
   2. household patterns of use
   3. market patterns of trade and transport, supply and demand, prices and volumes
   4. the economic costs and benefits affecting decisions to hunt, trade and consume bushmeat of different types
      
      
2. Bushmeat extraction is happening largely in countries/areas where state control is relatively weak, and where customary and other authorities cross-cut official state systems of regulation and enforcement. Under these circumstances "community" access to bushmeat resources, and "community" control of their harvesting and use, are complex propositions. We need to understand the real interplay of
   1. hunters
   2. patrons (chiefs, military officials, businessmen and others financing weapons and ammunition and taking profit as well as bushmeat product)
   3. state and other "parallel economy" structures of regulation, enforcement and profit extraction  

That is my starting position. Please get back to me with your ideas. I also hope to be able to draw on/circulate the minutes of the original meeting - we should have these soon.

With best wishes

Katherine Homewood