Getting to grips with the magnitude of exploitation: Bushmeat in the Cross–Sanaga rivers region, Nigeria and Cameroon Original Research Article

Wild meat harvests in African moist forests are presumed to exceed production, even in the case of traditional societies still using rudimentary hunting methods. Though some approximations do exist of the volume of bushmeat harvested in some Central African moist forest areas, estimates based on extensive and simultaneous sampling, within a large geographical region, are not available. Here, we present the results of the first reported study of this kind. During a period of 5 month, we counted bushmeat carcasses deposited in 89 urban and rural markets in a 35,000 km2 area between the Cross River in Nigeria and the Sanaga River in Cameroon. We used these data to calculate annual bushmeat volume traded by site, species and overall in the study area.