Afflicted by poverty and drought, millions of people in East and Southern Africa are increasingly hunting and eating wild animals and in the process endangering several hundred species, according to a report released yesterday by TRAFFIC, an international wildlife monitoring program. With the decline in numbers of traditional game species like buffalo, hunters are now going after elephants, zebras, hippos, and other animals. While conservationists have long been worried about the effects of killing primates for food in the tropical forests of West Africa, the concern over the meat trade in the savannas of the eastern and southern parts of the continent is relatively recent. TRAFFIC supports sustainable hunting of wild game to help feed locals and is calling for ownership of wildlife to be transferred from governments to local communities and landholders so people will have a stake in keeping wildlife populations healthy.
