Tackling Wildlife Consumption in Urban Tropical Africa

Across the tropics, which contain the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, the meat of more than 2000 species of wild animal are consumed (known as 'wildmeat'). In many rural areas, people living close to wildlife rely on hunting wild animals as an essential source of food, income, and sometimes cultural identity. Whilst hunting can be important for rural local communities, unsustainable levels of hunting, i.e., overexploitation, is one of the leading causes of wildlife decline and extinction worldwide, and can significantly impact rural food security and livelihoods. Demand for wildmeat by people living in urban areas is one of the main drivers of overexploitation, and is an emerging conservation concern. In densely populated urban areas, the sale and consumption of wildlife is also a public health concern given that nearly three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases originate from wildlife. Reducing the consumption and sale of wildmeat in urban areas is therefore vital to tackle wildlife loss, and reduce the risk of disease spread, yet interventions to do this have been extremely limited. Wildmeat consumers differ in their consumption behaviours given the diversity of roles that wildmeat plays in diets, lives, and livelihoods. However, the factors that shape wildmeat consumption by urban consumers are not well categorised or understood, yet are critical to inform the design of effective interventions. Furthermore, the attitudes of the general public towards the environment and health play an important role in the enabling environment for effective interventions and policy-making, yet attitudes in relation to wildmeat consumption remain unknown. To address these vast knowledge gaps, I propose a novel research plan that integrates several disciplines to investigate public attitudes towards wildlife consumption, determine wildlife consumption patterns and what shapes decision-making by urban wildmeat consumers, and identify priority areas for intervention in tropical African countries. Firstly, I will investigate the attitudes and value orientations of the general public towards wildmeat consumption, health, and the environment in three African countries where face-to-face surveys are very challenging, using automated mobile phone surveys. Secondly, by combining face-to-face dietary intake surveys, choice-experiments, specialised questioning techniques, and food establishment mapping, I will identify the factors that underpin urban wildmeat consumption and determine the profiles of wildmeat consumers in several focal West and Central African towns and cities. Thirdly, using the data collected in this study, I will develop and test realistic scenarios of possible interventions to reduce wildmeat consumption (e.g., market bans, access to alternative sources of food, behaviour change campaigns), for the first time, through building a virtual laboratory that simulates urban wildmeat consumer behaviours, social networks, and their local food environment. Finally, using a newly available database of past research on urban market sales and consumption of wildmeat, I will identify priority urban areas for intervention based on positive and negative health implications of consuming wildmeat on human health. West and Central Africa was chosen as the study region because wildmeat consumption is known to be prevalent, food insecurity known to be high, and the rapidly urbanising population in sub-Saharan Africa is predicted to double in size by 2050. Simultaneously, demand for animal source foods is increasing, therefore unsustainable urban demand for wildlife poses a direct threat to species survival. By identifying the drivers underpinning wildmeat consumption, and testing management scenarios, appropriate actions can be taken to reduce urban wildmeat consumption, and consequently protect wildlife and the ecosystems that millions of people rely on.