Bushmeat Crisis vs Human Wants

Projects like GRASP may be asking the impossible in the face of increased demand for resources. Human consumption needs to be reduced if wildlife is to survive.

In and around the forests of the great ape range states efforts are being made to design sustainable use programs whereby local people are able to meet their needs without killing so many animals. The Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP) supports many of these community-based projects.

But these projects are doomed to failure until one critical issue is addressed:

Consumption in developed nations.

Americans, as the largest per capita consumers in the world, must recognize the fact that nearly every person in the US consumes as much as an entire family in some parts of the world. And while we may not eat bushmeat, the workers who log those forests do. That logging provides the cheap furniture many of us have. And the rest of the developed world is not that far behind America in consumption. And the developing nations are scrabbling desperately to catch up to the standard we have set.

Each time we make choices about cars, food and furniture, we affect wildlife somewhere in the world. If the world’s charismatic megafauna are to continue to grace this planet, each of us needs to make the hard choice more often. For the great apes, our less is their more.