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Comittee: Simon Lhoest (co-promotor), Cédric Vermeulen (co-promotor)

Abstract:

Today, global biodiversity is facing an unprecedented crisis and tropical forests, as highly diverse ecosystems, are directly affected. Indeed, several threats are currently hanging over them and in particular the consumption of bushmeat, especially in central Africa. The objective of this master thesis is to quantify, using biophysical, social and economic methods, the bushmeat harvested and consumed in three Cameroonian villages with contrasting patterns of forest land use. Offtakes were quantified on the basis of the tracking of volunteer hunters over 651 km. Consumption was evaluated on the basis of daily monitoring of the food bowl of 55 households for 3 months. The size of the hunting territories is influenced by many factors such as population density, the presence of alternative protein sources or the history of the village. Although poaching controls in the Dja Faunal Reserve and, to a lesser extent, certified logging concessions appear to play a deterrent role, hunting activities are significant in all types of land use. The hunted and consumed animal species do not differ much between the villages studied and are mainly represented by artiodactyls. Bushmeat represents on average 56 % of the animal protein consumed by households, the remaining part being mainly fishes. The evaluation of harvesting and consumption enables decision-makers and forest managers to target anti-poaching efforts and size the alternatives to establish in order to compete with bushmeat.