Bushmeat Action
The bushmeat crisis, the commercial, illegal trade in
meat from wild animals, which is particularly common in West and Central
Africa, has been the theme of various activities during the year 2000.
The exhibition Gorillas in the Cooking Pot in the Stuttgart Zoo
from June to September had a great response. In particular, Marianne Holtkötter
supported the exhibition in every conceivable way. We also have to thank
Professor Jauch, the Director of Stuttgart Zoo, for his courage and trust
and for the funding, all of which made the exhibition possible in the
first place.
Shortly after the exhibition had been opened, German
zoo directors and EEP coordinators had a meeting in Stuttgart and they
seized the opportunity to have a look at the 34 posters on the bushmeat
problem. There was great interest in taking the exhibition to other zoos.
Consequently, it went to Cologne Zoo in October and will stay there until
December.
From January to March 2001 it can be seen in Neunkirchen
Zoo, from April to May 2001 in Heidelberg Zoo and from June in Karlsruhe.
Besides, the zoos of Krefeld, Zürich, Herberstein, Basel and Hamburg will
also show the exhibition. In exchange, the zoos will donate a certain
amount of money to the Berggorilla & Regenwald Direkthilfe.
As other organisations (Rettet den Regenwald, Wild Chimpanzee
Foundation, Bonobo In Situ Project, Rettet den Drill,
World Society for the Protection of Animals) also contributed material,
they will help to determine which projects working against the bushmeat
trade will receive the money.
The exhibition formed the basis of a European-wide
bushmeat campaign initiated by the European Association of Zoos and
Aquaria (EAZA).
The campaign is to inform the visitors to European zoos about the background
of the bushmeat trade and collect donations for organisations working
to find a solution to the bushmeat problem. The Berggorilla & Regenwald
Direkthilfe is one of them.
In addition, signatures are collected for a petition calling upon the
political decision-makers in Europe and Africa to initiate effective measures
to solve the bushmeat problem. The petition was laid out publicly for
the first time during the exhibition in Stuttgart. We collected 20,000
signatures there. The aim is to get at least one million signatures. When
this is achieved, the petition will be handed over to the leaders of African
nations by Jane Goodall and others. This campaign will probably run until
October 2001 and hopefully receive a lot of attention from the media.
(Updates December 2001, June
2002, December 2003,
June 2004)
In the USA, local organisations are also very active.
Working groups spring up everywhere, because people now recognize the
severe threat the bushmeat trade is posing. This happened during the spring
2000 CITES conference, for instance. During the World Conservation Congress
in Amman, the IUCN passed a resolution to ban the illegal bushmeat trade.
It is encouraging to see that organisations and institutions worldwide
seem to cooperate well in this campaign.
Meanwhile we created a website for the campaign with the tables of the exhibition that can be downloaded as PDF files.
Iris Weiche in the exhibition