October 2011: A report prepared for the Bushmeat Liaison Group of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) concludes that resolving the crisis in harvesting bushmeat is possible if governments combine new management models, including community-based management, game ranching and hunting tourism, with new mechanisms for monitoring and law enforcement.

Published as CBD Technical Series No. 60, the report, titled “Livelihood Alternatives for the Unsustainable Use of Bushmeat,” suggests that international and domestic commercial, and often illegal, trade in the meat and other parts of wild animals (“bushmeat”) is growing significantly and is replacing legitimate subsistence hunting. Together with population growth, poverty in rural areas and increased urban consumption, the absence of livelihood alternatives to bushmeat hunting and trade is a major factor contributing to unsustainable levels of bushmeat harvesting.

The report describes examples of success stories and lessons learned in Africa, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, and offers recommendations for action at the regional and global levels. Key recommendations include: implementation of community wildlife management and other improved wildlife-management approaches, such as game-ranching and hunting tourism; increase of raising of “mini-livestock’”(wild animals such as cane rats raised in small farms); and support of sustainable harvesting of non-timber forest products, such as bee-keeping. The report also recognizes the need to clarify and define land-tenure and access rights, improve monitoring of bushmeat harvesting and trade, and enhance bushmeat-related law enforcement [CBD Press Release] [Publication: Livelihood Alternatives for the Unsustainable Use of Bushmeat]