The snaring and consumption of wild animal meat, known as ‘bushmeat’, is one of the most serious threats facing wildlife in Kenya today. Prompted by the rise in poverty, wild animals from gorillas to zebras and even elephants are snared by poachers, butchered, and then transported across the globe as part of a widespread commercial trade. Increasingly the problem is also posing a threat to human health, with instances of Ebola, foot and mouth and AIDS all being linked to bushmeat consumption.

According to the BBC, nearly 7,500 tonnes of illegal meat products enter Britain every year, often disguised as ‘beef’. With a reduction in customs staff, ports up and down the coast are left vulnerable to smugglers and as a result, 85% of bushmeat enters through personal luggage. Once in the UK, more than half (55%) of the illegal meat is distributed through wholesalers or sold at local street markets. Most Brits are completely unaware of the illegal trade and the potential risk that they could face by consuming illicit meat.

In an attempt to halt the unethical trade, Land Rover, together with the animal rights charity Born Free, use mobile cinema units to successfully educate local Kenyan communities about the dangers of the bushmeat trade

Chief Executive of Born Free, Will Travers, who co-founded the internationally-renowned charity in 1984, will be joined by Ian Redmond OBE, Born Free’s Senior Wildlife Consultant and United Nations Ambassador for Year of the Gorilla with journalist / broadcaster Miriam O’Reilly, presenting an exclusive Web TV show to provide an educational insight into the bushmeat trade.

For more information visit www.bornfree.org.uk

H: Host, Jayne Constantinis
W: Will Travers, Chief Executive, Born Free
M: Miriam O’Reilly
I: Ian Redmond OBE – Ambassador for UN Year of the Gorilla

H: Hello and welcome to the Good Causes show, I’m Jayne Constantinis. On today’s show we’re going to be looking at one of the most serious threats facing wildlife in Africa, and in particular in Kenya today. The snaring and consumption of bush meat. Prompted by the rise in poverty, wild animals from gorillas to zebras and even elephants are snared by poachers, butchered, and then transported across the globe as part of a widespread commercial trade. Well here to discuss this are my guests Will Travers whose chief executive from Born Free, Miriam O’Reilly whose supporting the charity, and she’s recently been out to Kenya to find out more about this illegal trade, and Ian Redmond OBE whose ambassador for the UN Year of the Gorilla. Thank you very much for coming in to talk to us. And of course we’re live, so if you’ve got a question or a comment to make then type it in the box on your screen and send it to us with your name of course, and we’ll get through as many as we can during the course of the show. Now the statistic is there’s a huge amount of this illegal meat making its way into Britain. How has this come about? What is happening?

W: Well I think it’s very important firstly to differentiate between illegal meat which could be beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and bush meat. The bush meat components almost certainly are going to be a very small proportion of the estimated 7,500 tonnes of illegal meat that reaches the UK every year, but it’s a very important component, because it’s wild animals, bush meat is the meat from wild animals, it’s not been sustainably harvested, it’s not been raised in a way where you can guarantee health and the health of the animal, and therefore there are concerns about human health and human welfare, alongside the other concern which is this is now, as you described, a vast commercial trade and it’s having a serious negative impact on wildlife populations, in Kenya, East Africa, central Africa, in fact in many, many countries around the world

H: In fact Miriam you’ve just been to Kenya, you’ve made a film about this problem. Were you surprised about the extent of it?

M: I was actually. We were in Zavo East which is Kenya’s largest national park and we were looking at snares, and I think we have one in the studio with us here. And we walked for a couple of hours and we found any snares, these had been set by poachers to catch small antelope, like dic dic but larger animals, rarer animals are being caught in them as well. I mean while we were there we did actually rescue one of the small antelopes from –

H: In fact we’ve got a clip of that exact event, so let’s just have a little look at it and then we’ll come back

Video Footage

“You can see where the snare is here look. Here’s the wire, and you can see the wire’s actually anchored onto the tree here and as the animal tries to pull, it’ll be completely tethered. There goes the radio here – “

“Our advance party have just had the call that an animal is trapped in a snare. We were able to get to it just in time, although it’s frightened it’s actually unhurt, so we can let it go free now.”

H: So a rare happy ending to that little story. What’s the extent of the problem? How many animals and rare animals in particular are being caught in these snares?

M: An awful lot. I mean it’s difficult really to put a figure on it, and I think this is something that possibly Will or Ian would be able to talk more about, but from what we found on the ground from Zavo East National Park, and from Mount Kenya, there are many hundreds, and one of the things that really surprised me as well were stories that I was hearing about larger animals like elephants becoming caught up in these snares. We heard of one particular elephant, and its trunk had become caught in a snare, and because the animal was then in distress and was pulling, had actually – it’s trunk had been cut off which is – I mean it’s horrible to think about isn’t it? But this is actually happening

H: So Ian tell us what the potential impact is going to be on the wildlife of Africa and Kenya in particular?

I: Yes well I mean Kenya’s economy is very much dependent upon the success of its tourism industry, and most people go to Kenya to look at wildlife –

H: I’ve been there myself – fantastic place. Beautiful. Magical

I: So that gives the impression, because of that economic value, that animals are just there as kind of ornaments that we can go and look at. I’m an ecologist and I’m more concerned with what happens to that habitat when that animal that was a part of that ecosystem, is removed, and what happens is that the ecosystem changes, so you take away the animals that are eating the plants, the plants will grow unfretted, and there will be changes. Some plants will die out. You usually lose species, and it’s particularly important in forests where I spent most of my time, seeing these snares brings back all sorts of memories for me, because I’ve spent many years cutting snares like this which are set for antelope but which also catch gorillas and mountain gorillas live in a part of Africa where people don’t eat gorilla meat, so gorillas aren’t the target, they’re the by-catch, they’re like dolphins in tuna nets, as are elephants in east Africa where most people don’t eat elephant, there are some tribes that do, but in central and west Africa elephant meat is also served, but there they’re usually shot rather than snared. So whether it’s by snare or whether it’s by shotgun, the animals are being removed from the ecosystem and particularly with primates which are slow breeding, and the great apes, you know you kill a silver back, you have to wait 15 years for a baby to grow up into another silver back –

H: Maturity

I: So it’s not a species that you can harvest sustainably. And once they’re lost from the forest then the role that they play, they are fruit-eating animals, they eat the fruit, and then the seeds pass through the system and are deposited miles from the parent plant in a nice little package of fertiliser

H: It’s all about – it’s always about the balance isn’t it?

I: So you lose the seed dispersal mechanism of many of the trees, and that means that the next generation of trees isn’t going to grow. Now at the moment we’re beginning to value the tropical forests of Amazonia, of Africa, of Southeast Asia as the three rungs of the earth. You know they take in the carbon from the atmosphere, they generate oxygen, they stabilise the weather systems locally but they generate rainfall patterns that actually water North America and Europe. The rain in Britain comes, some of it, through Africa, and if you lose that function of the forest because you’ve wiped out all the animals, the trees will last a while but then they die, and where are the new trees coming through? That’s what concerns me in the longer term and that’s why the United Nations is very much involved in this issue through the United Nations environment program, and using gorillas as a species that is symbolic of the Congo Basin, they’re only found in the 10 countries in and around the Congo Basin, this year is the year of the Gorilla, and we hope to focus the world’s attention on the preservation of that whole ecosystem for all those reasons. Climate stability as well as the protection of endangered species

H: But Will haven’t the people who live among these animals always hunted bush meat? What’s changed now?

W: Well I think what’s changed is just the sheer scale and volume of what’s going on. The idea of the sort of local peasant who goes out and catches something for the pot, not dissimilar to the odd poacher here who used to go out and, you know, grab a couple of pheasants off of the landlord’s land. That is – it does still exist, there are still people who need to survive in that way, but the new dimension over the last 20 year has been this vast commercial trade where organised crime goes into an area, organisers for thousands of snares to be set, indiscriminately killing or maiming all sorts of different animals – you can’t target effectively using a snare, it’s whatever blunders into it, and then thousands of animals literally are slaughtered. There’s a stunning statistic from Tanzania, we’ve all sort of seen the wildebeest migration, you know a million animals, and we see the lions predating, what we don’t see also is that 40,000 wildebeest are killed by poachers as they make the annual migration journey, and that’s not occasional poaching, that is organised poaching from meat markets in the cities, and that’s, that’s what’s really changed

H: Well we’ve got a rare bit of footage now, very short piece, an interview with a poacher. Let’s just have a look at that and then come back to talk about the issue again a bit more

Video Footage

What sort of animals have you been killing?

I have only killed dik dik. I do not sell the meat but exchange it for other types of food such as maize.

Is it enough to feed your family?

No

H: Now what he’s basically saying is it’s a question of feeding my family or killing a whatever it was. Is it true?

M: Well we talked our way into the local jail to speak to this guy because he’d been picked up a couple of days earlier and he had a substantial number of animals. He was saying that his farm had failed, his wife didn’t earn enough money to feed the family, he had a very bright son who was at school and he needed to pay if his son was going to continue his schooling, and that was very important to him. So he said that he was exchanging the meat for other food, and he put a very good case forward, I mean he portrayed himself as a poor farmer who had no option, otherwise his children would go hungry. So I met this man and I had to take it on face value, but Ian was saying something very interesting earlier about the bartering of meat for grain and –

I: Well you have to ask if he’s swapping meat for maize meal, and you compare the value in the shops in Nairobi of meat and maize meal, who is buying the maize meal and swapping it for meat, because someone is profiteering from that man’s misfortune, and at the rate that wildlife is being poached around his habitat, he might have depended on occasional poaching in the past, but he’s not going to depend on it in the future, because the meat’s all going to be gone

H: I mean I think we’re at the heart of the issue here, certainly from our perspective, in the west, and having myself travelled to Africa many, many times, it’s this sense of you know should the animals be more important than the starving locals who have to – but is that not the case?

W: It’s – but I don’t think it’s as simple as that

H: No

W: And I think again that huge commercial dimension has to be recognised. We worked on a paper a few years ago called food security for rural populations and the one factor that stood out from that is that if you have healthy, dynamic environments full of wildlife, when things go wrong, as they always seem to, whether it’s drought or famine or world events, economic collapse, the local people depend on that healthy, vibrant, full of wildlife environment to survive, and who would deny them that? But what we’re saying and what we’re so deeply concerned about is that their future is being jeopardised by the commercial dimension of bush meat poaching

H: So what’s being done then to try to reach the people who are at the top of the tree, if you like, the ones who are running it on a commercial basis?

M: Well the Kenyan Wildlife Service said that they were pushing for tougher laws, and they felt that that would do it. Whether it will or not, I mean they wouldn’t accept that in some cases poverty, is at the heart of this problem. They insisted that it was criminal gains in the main, but we also met people that were living on a subsistence level who did need to kill the occasional antelope and I genuinely believe that they did and they always had, but I’m not sure whether tougher laws will do it. I mean they have to be enforced, and whose going to enforce them in such large areas?

I: You need a combined/a suite of options. Better enforcement of existing laws and possibly tougher ones, better education so that people understand more, because if you get the local communities who do depend on wildlife in the tough times to help you then they will have that option in the future. If they see that that short term gain from selling the meat to some city bloke who turns up in a vehicle and picks it up is not the long term future.

H: I just want to come in with a question from Clara here who said “While I was travelling to Africa I ate lots of meat from local restaurants and food stalls on the markets. I am a bit scared now after hearing about the illegal trade in bush meat. Should I speak to my doctor?” We are now moving on, we are going to come back to what can be done about in a second, but we are coming on to the potential health risks from this illegal bush meat. What are they?

M: Ebola is one.

W: Indeed there have been and the US state department did issue, some notifications last year I think it was 2007 at any rate, talking about the link between illegal meat and potential human health problems and they pointed out, you know, meat can carry Anthrax, it can carry Ebola, it can carry TB and there is a threat to our livestock industry if it is carrying foot and mouth disease or it could be. So all of these things, I certainly don’t want to scare the person who has written in, I think if she is feeling ok and she has been back for a while then it is highly likely that there is nothing wrong, but I think it is important that people who do go travelling to parts of Africa and there is meat on the menu try and reassure themselves that it has come from a reputable source, it’s a reputable restaurant and all those kind of things. Just in the sense that you would do here. If someone pulls up in your street opens up the back of the van and says here do you want 50 kilos of meat going cheap. Hey the people are put in prison for that.

I: I would encourage Clara to get an anti parasitic medicine because she might well have some worms from eating not very well cooked meat.

W: Ian has first hand experience.

H: That is slightly more information than we need right now. We’ll do that off camera. Matt has also sent in a.... he says rather frivolously “I’ll never be able to look at my kebab meat in the same way again” but seriously how can he be sure, in this country, that he not buying he said “elephant meat” but he is talking about illegal bush meat. Is there anything we can do here as consumers?

M: Well illegal bush meat, bush meat is on sale in some markets in London. I have seen it for myself.

H: Should we report that?

M: Well it is reported and trading standards are doing a very good job actually. Yes it is a problem. One of the reasons people eat meat and I am sure this chap is not among those is that it is a cultural thing. Meat is imported into this country, bush meat, from West Africa and it is part of people’s culture to eat this. We were talking to you about Cane Rats and Grasscutters and I have seen monkey heads in store in London where they have been confiscated from market stalls. I don’t think they are openly on sale. I think you would have to try hard to find bush meat.

W: You would need to order it.

H: The message is if you see it report it.

All: Yes absolutely

M: If you can distinguish what it is? It is hard to. When we were in Kenya I was looking at two pieces of meat and I did know one was an Oryx, which is an antelope and one was goat. Usually if it is beef or goat or lamb then there is more fat on it.

W: We had to have it DNA tested to prove it

H: Really

W: To prove conclusively. I mean it was amazing we bought two sample and from the two one of them turns out to be bush meat. That’s like a 50% strike rate.

H: Let’s move on to...We have painted a very gloomy picture. What is being done about it on the ground? We have talked about what Government legislation and so on. What about on the ground? What about education?

M: It is tremendous because I was out with Born Free. Born Free have a film that they show to local communities – it was a tremendous occasion actually, we were in Mount Kenya and Land Rover pulled up, the screen came out and it was a – it was actually a very entertaining film, with amateur actors and so – it was a story about eating bush meat and what can happen

H: What are the key messages of the film if you like? What are you trying to educate people?

M: You don’t know what you’re eating. I mean they became ill in the film from eating this particular meat, but the message did get across, and the kids loved it. We talked to them about it afterwards, they understood what they were watching and they understood that it was wrong to eat –

H: We’ve actually got a clip of the cinema in action if you like, so let’s have a little look at that

Video Footage

“Born Free believes poverty is behind the increase in poaching and says education is the key to solving it. Their mobile cinema unit travels the country showing the film ‘Mazoga’, a drama about poaching. Around 500 people are expected to come and watch.

The film is about to start, there’s a real party atmosphere here. The children have been waiting for hours in a high state of excitement and some of the grown-ups have walked nearly 5 miles to see the show.

What did you think of the film?

Poaching is not right

Why do you have to conserve wildlife in Kenya?

You must conserve for the future so that the coming generation can come and see the wildlife.

Would you be a poacher?

No

H: That looks amazing and in – as you say – it is being effective, it really is getting the message across isn’t it?

W: Yes. It is I mean in fact we’ve now shown it to more than 100,000 people in rural communities, people who have no access to TV. We managed to get the national TV station to show it for free, I mean we just gave them the film and they showed, so a million people watched in then. So it is getting that message out, and what I love about that film, made by Kenya’s, starring Kenyans, written by Kenyans, music by Kenyans. You know it is for Kenya

H: Yes, brilliant. Looks an expensive operation though?

W: The film itself was quite expensive to put together for us. The actual on the ground anti-poaching is the sort of sharp end, and I’ll give you an example – to put a Land Rover, team of six in the field for a week, week to ten days costs about £1300 / £1400 to do, and we want to be doing that time and time and time and time again, so you can see that it starts to mount up and you know, only an organisation of a certain size – we try and do something literally every two weeks

M: And that works

H: And it works, yes

M: Because I’ve seen large areas cleared of these horrible snares, but you have to keep on top of it, you have to keep going back and going back

W: They have to know that you’re coming back,

M: Yes, yes

W: Because that’s the disincentive, you know you’ve gone and laid all your snares, someone comes and takes them out and you do them again

H: Put them back, of course

W: But then you take it away again and then eventually someone’s going to say oh no this is just like ridiculous

M: And Born Free volunteers are with wardens, so the Kenyan Wildlife service is there

W: Yes we always do it with KWF

M: The poachers know that actually there are men there that could arrest them

H: Sure. That leads me on to Katie’s story and a sentiment that I also feel actually. She says “I’m really moved by this story. Does Born Free employ volunteers and if so how can I get involved?” It may not be volunteering, what else can we do? Ordinary people who see this who love Africa, who love those animals, who want to do something?

W: Ok, well on the volunteer side, it is actually something we’re now looking at seriously. We genuinely use Kenyan volunteers, but I’m beginning to think that there are people who would like to go to, say Kenya for two weeks and do a week of work with the de-snaring teams, and then go for a week’s safari and have sort of the fun and the hardship as well, and I’m looking seriously at that, so getting in touch with Born Free, I will put together the criteria because obviously I can’t – not anyone will be suitable. It’s hard work. I mean Miriam you’ve actually done it for a few hours and you were saying how –

M: Back-breaking

W: Strenuous it is

M: You’ve got to really care, you’ve got to be so committed, to go into the bush, walk for miles in the heat

H: In the heat, yes

M: And clear these things. And it takes a long time to do it

I: But the other thing that you need to consider is what alternatives are you going to offer to these people who are being told on the one hand by the wealthy guy in the city here, give us some meat we’ll give you a few bags of maize, and this is one example which, it’s artwork made out of snares, so you give people a bit of training, they can turn that into things to sell to tourists, it uses the snare wire which is good, wherever you put it

H: Yes, it can’t be re-used

I: You can’t recycle it as a snare, and it creates an alternative livelihood. And there are other examples of things – Born Free works in a number of countries in Africa, and in Cameroon, not only do they help support the orphans of the bush meat trade, the young gorillas and chimpanzees in sanctuaries, but we’re trying to get some backing for a new initiative, training bush meat hunters to keep bees, because honey is a very valuable product from the forest, because keeping bees actually helps the forest ecology rather than destroying it, and there’s a lot of interest and the bush meat hunters would probably rather look after a couple of bee hives

H: Yes

I: Than traipse around the forest, which – hunting is hard work too, so you offer somebody an alternative

H: Yes

I: And then they’re going to be much more –

W: There are a range of ways that people can help, we’ll look at the volunteer thing, we’ve got to look at livelihoods and of course I’ve already mentioned, it costs money to do –

H: A bit of dosh wouldn’t go a miss of course

W: Certainly not

H: I’ll say it on your behalf

W: Not in this time of economic climate that we’re in

M: The jail where we spoke to that man, Born Free, and I saw Born Free at work, I was very impressed actually by Born Free in Kenya, and these tremendous things, I mean because Born Free has piles of snares, they’ve decided, or they were talking with the governor of this particular jail to try and train some of the poachers who are in jail to make these

H: What a good idea

M: And they were very keen to do that, and when we left, Born Free was talking with the jail to get the guys to make –

W: And we know that these sell, I mean we did an auction in London with the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation and Born Free together, £25,000 we raised at that auction from what we call snare art, and that money goes back to Africa and it helps protect wildlife and it provides a livelihood

H: And are they generally on sale in the UK?

W: No they’re not, not yet

H: You need to find an outlet for them then, come on, whoever’s watching who would like to sell them

W: I’ll just let you say those things

H: We’re all fired up now

W: Yes

H: It’s really interesting to talk to you about it, thank you very much for coming in and sharing, we could go on all day couldn’t we? But if you’d like to know more, and obviously if you’d like to make a donation, then look at the Born Free website which is bornfree.org.uk and /bushmeat will take you directly to the subject that we’ve just been talking about. Thank you, good luck with the campaign

W: Thank you

H: I hope you have huge success and thanks for coming in to talk to us

W: Thank you

I: Pleasure

H: Thanks for watching, bye bye

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