Mapping the Bushmeat Crisis

Jun 22, 2009

by Andrew Tobiason, Bushmeat Crisis Task Force

People are inherently visual, and in the early days of raising awareness about the bushmeat crisis – five to ten years ago – photographs of dead gorillas and smoked antelope shocked the public and brought the conservation community to action. But action requires information. How many animals are affected? What are the greatest threats? Which solutions are working? Who is involved? Above all, where are all these things taking place? If a picture of bushmeat was worth a thousand words in the 1990’s, then a map of the bushmeat crisis is worth millions today.

The Bushmeat Crisis Task Force (BCTF) has spent over three years conceptualizing, planning and creating that very map, through the Bushmeat Information Management and Analysis Project (Bushmeat IMAP). Bushmeat IMAP is shorthand for both a new information management tool and the process of creating it. The Bushmeat IMAP includes maps in the traditional sense, but is also a knowledge map - an information tool that points to even more information. It is a guide to and repository of bushmeat-related publications and project descriptions, easily exceeding a million words of information.

BCTF uses the Bushmeat IMAP to catalog and share information, support member requests, and prepare materials for stakeholders around the globe. Anyone with Internet access can use mapping features to view, analyze, and print maps of bushmeat factors in Central Africa, or search for publications and projects worldwide using keyword and world map interfaces. For stakeholders without Internet access, many features will also be available on CD. This one-of-a-kind information management system has critically important applications, from facilitating linkages between U.S. and African efforts to quickly educating the public and key decision makers on the scale and complexity of the bushmeat issue.

HISTORY

BCTF was created in 1999 as the first coordinated effort by North American wildlife conservation groups to address the growing unsustainable, illegal commercial trade in wildlife for food. BCTF’s primary function is information management for its members. BCTF has created a library of peer-reviewed publications, reports and news pieces and bushmeat projects database. This information has supported every BCTF effort, from hearings on Capitol Hill and priority setting workshops, to journalist and researcher inquiries, and education and public awareness initiatives. Mindful of its core mission, BCTF developed the Bushmeat IMAP to make its internal bushmeat databases both more accessible and more relevant, by putting them online and giving them spatial context using recent advances in web-enabled geographic information systems (GIS) and reference databases.

To create the Bushmeat IMAP, BCTF has partnered with the Global Forest Watch (GFW) program of World Resources Institute (WRI), the experts in mapping forest access and logging in the Congo Basin. This was a natural partnership, since demand for bushmeat is largely supplied by hunters using logging roads and trucks in this region. In addition, GFW and BCTF staff had simultaneously determined that many of our shared partners working in the Congo Basin had expressed a need for a common set of information layers for the work they were doing. The Bushmeat IMAP seemed a perfect solution for creating a single system which all organizations could use to share information and lessons learned, while conserving limited conservation finances.

From June 2004 to January 2005, grants allowed BCTF and GFW to implement a pilot of the Bushmeat IMAP, with a dedicated GIS analyst based at GFW, and software and hardware for data management by BCTF’s Information Services Coordinator. The pilot phase also included two field missions to gather data and introduce the project to stakeholders in Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo. The seven-month pilot effort resulted in a Bushmeat IMAP web portal and the development of several new geographic and reference databases.

HOW IT WORKS

Stripped of its web veneer, the Bushmeat IMAP is a GIS of spatial data in Central Africa, and a bibliographic reference manager of publications and projects, with links to full text of many publications. The GIS and ”digital library” are available online, and are seamlessly integrated with other IMAP pages on the BCTF website. GIS layers are cross-referenced with library searches, and projects and publications from around the world are searchable by keyword and an interactive world map. The Central African Mapserver, Digital Library and World Data Map are available through a portal on the BCTF website, at www.bushmeat.org/IMAP.

Suppose you are a curator with an interest in getting your institution engaged on the bushmeat crisis. Perhaps you are looking for a field project to support, or you want to learn how other zoos present the issue to the public? Maybe you are interested in both aspects – linking an exhibit’s education display to conservation in the field – but which species in your zoo are threatened by the bushmeat trade? With the Bushmeat IMAP, you are only a few clicks away from having a detailed view of the bushmeat crisis, and learning what other zoos are doing to stop the bushmeat trade and educate their publics. A few more steps and you’ll have custom bibliographies and maps for the species and issues which interest you most, improving and expediting the production of educational signage.

A student, field researcher or policymaker can use the Bushmeat IMAP in the same way. We envision a number of applications, including:

  • Revealing correlations and gaps in knowledge, identify threats, and prioritize solutions for the conservation and development communities

  • Helping to evaluate the health of forests and wildlife populations

  • Demonstrating trends to Central African governments and other key decision makers

  • Illustrating the bushmeat crisis to the media and public

  • Connecting donors to projects and researchers to colleagues

  • Harmonizing data collection and utilization by field personnel

  • Providing research support to BCTF’s members and partners involved with USAID’s Central African Regional Program for the Environment and the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (see http://carpe.umd.edu and http://cbfp.org).

FOCUS ON CENTRAL AFRICA

The Bushmeat Crisis is a worldwide phenomenon, but the threat is not uniformly distributed. In Southeast Asia and West Africa, many large mammals have already been decimated beyond recovery, while in Latin America commercial hunting for food does not yet appear to be as major a concern. In the Congo Basin, and six countries containing a rainforest second only to the Amazon in size, there are still many populations of large, endangered species that remain but which are under immediate threat. The bushmeat trade is pervasive here, and the human population is only growing larger. Bountiful natural resources are a blessing and a curse, as governments, multinational companies and international NGO’s seek ways to use the forest, ideally creating jobs and investment while leaving wildlife and rural livelihoods intact. For these reasons, the opportunity to change the course of the crisis is arguably greatest in Central Africa.

In the pilot phase of Bushmeat IMAP implementation, our GIS analyst focused on gathering seven types of data, “bushmeat factors” prioritized by BCTF members and partners working in Central Africa. These include:

  • Forests designated for logging;

  • Forest sites designated for mining and petroleum and natural gas drilling;

  • Logging roads, oil pipelines and other private access routes;

  • Public roads, railways, airports and seaports;

  • Human settlement and population data;

  • Protected areas boundaries and attributes; and,

  • Geographic distribution data for bushmeat-targeted species.

Overlaid in an online map, these factors are a powerful tool for quickly seeing relationships and identifying areas of concern. In the offline GIS, quantitative analysis and priority setting will also be possible.

When the IMAP was first launched in September 2004, the Bushmeat Mapserver contained GFW’s maps of vegetation and other natural features, protected areas and logging concessions, major roads, railroads, and major cities. As this article is being prepared, so too are many new GIS layers. By publication time, the Mapserver should include species distribution maps for 33 mammals targeted by the bushmeat trade, revised road data for Cameroon, small human settlements in Cameroon and Gabon, population density for the region, updated national parks and other protected areas, revised logging concession information, stations on the Trans-Gabonais railway, and the extent of the newly-opened Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline. BCTF Members and Partners have worked closely with staff to create an extremely cost-effective and useful pilot effort toward managing bushmeat information. BCTF is eager to continue this process to enable the Bushmeat IMAP to be developed to its full potential.

FUTURE

With the infrastructure and key partnerships in place, a number of enhancements are being planned for the Bushmeat IMAP. For example, we will provide further integration with the Bushmeat Education Resource Guide (BERG), a BCTF product developed in collaboration with 30 individuals at 23 AZA institutions, and available at www.bushmeat.org/BERG. The Bushmeat IMAP is already a continuously updated resource for many education references and projects, and can help zoos quickly create maps of the bushmeat issue. However, BCTF could also use the Bushmeat IMAP to map out zoos which have used the BERG, and link to websites or photos depicting that use. Another idea is to design activities for the BERG where school children use the Bushmeat IMAP to do their own research and create their own solutions to the crisis.

Besides enhancement, there is the continual work of updating information. While on mission in Africa, our GIS analyst received a number of commitments for new data as it becomes available, including new logging concession designations and national park management information from Gabon, national park data from Democratic Republic of Congo, and a variety of datasets in development in the Republic of Congo. Future missions will seek data in Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea, and may expand to other regional “factors” including bushmeat market sites. We will continue to update the Central African GIS and worldwide projects database, and keep up with the continually growing body of news and research on the bushmeat trade.

BCTF and GFW are very pleased with the results of our pilot effort, and anticipate a high volume of use from researchers, key decision makers, BCTF members and the public. We are committed to further developing the Bushmeat IMAP to better serve those addressing the bushmeat crisis in Africa and around the world.

The Bushmeat IMAP is made possible through the generous contributions of BCTF’s Supporting and Contributing Members, our partnership with Global Forest Watch, and grants from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, International Fund for Animal Welfare, and an anonymous foundation.

© 1999-2009 Bushmeat Crisis Task Force