Wildlife hunting coming to a rapid end, forests soon empty
When the forests are emptied, exploitation continues. Hunters either
choose another species to hunt or proceed to another area to exploit.
Bennett described the wildlife trade as boom and bust trade: a
pristine area is a boom region until it is over exploited and goes
bust when trade is forced elsewhere. “The implications of all this for
loss of ecosystem function are still not fully understood, although
many studies show that tropical forests depleted of large vertebrates
experience reduced seed dispersal, altered patterns of tree
recruitment and shifts in the relative abundances of species,” Bennett
told the media. “The loss of top predators and other ‘keystone
species’ has a disproportionate impact on ecosystems and can result in
dramatic biodiversity changes.”
To give a picture of the scale of this
underground trade, Bennett pointed a number of examples: in Ho Chi
Minh City there are an estimated 1500 restaurants selling wildlife
meat; in Jakarta, Indonesia, the Pramuka market sells 1.5 million sold
birds annually; a recent seizure of two shipments of pangolins enroute
to China 14 tons of scaly anteater from Sumatra and 23 tons from
Vietnam. The shipment contained an estimated 7,000 animals — no
species can survive an onslaught like this for long. This has been
borne out by Vietnam where 12 species of large animals have gone
either gone extinct or are on the verge of doing so due largely to the
wildlife trade. The problem has become global. In Cameroon, so many of
the large animals are gone that hunters have begun using rodent traps
to catch the smaller mammals that remain.
The island of Bioko has seen
a loss of 90 percent of its biomass due to hunting, National
Geographic covered the problem in its August issue of last year.
Surveys of 100 sites in the Amazon show animal populations have
diminished by 83 to 91 percent. Even reserves offer little protection;
the island of Sulawesi’s reserves have experienced a 75 percent
decline in black macaques, 90 percent decline in anoas, and a 95
percent decline of the bear cuscus. China is the world’s largest
importer wildlife products, including an insatiable demand for
turtles, ivory, tigers, pangolins, and many other species used for
food or medicine. Perhaps surprisingly the USA is the second largest
importer—according to Bennett many tons of bushmeat arrives to the US
from Africa every month and the US is large destination for the
illegal pet trade. Most of the species targeted by hunters are not
able to recover fast enough to sustain the levels at which they are
hunted. In tropical forests mammals are few and far between and their
scarcity makes them vulnerable. Primates are “very vulnerable to
overhunting” due to a slow breeding process, as are other species like
elephants and tapirs, says Bennett. Animals that live in groups, like
birds and primates, are also vulnerable since one population can be
wiped out by a single hunter.
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0118-hance_hunting.html