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'Say No to Bush Meat'

Ghanaian Chronicle
February 5, 2003

Grace Christiana Afoduora

The country director of Conservation International, a non-governmental organisation, Nana Okyeame Ampadu, has said, "consumers who buy bush meat for food buy their deaths."

Speaking in an interview, Nana Okyeame explained that animals play vital role in the lives of humans and so when they are not protected they may extinct and this will affect both the environment and humans as a whole.

He continued their organization has been set up to stop the rampant killing of wild animals, to protect them from extinction and to preserve the environment as well. He also said the organization will bring the attention of the publics to the danger that they are in in buying these animals which sometimes are poisoned so as to stop them from hunting the animals.

Nana Okyeame emphasized on the importance animals are to humans. He said animal helps in the growing of vegetation in the forest by spreading the seed of plants around for germination. He noted until some seed of plants pass through the gullets of animals it will never germinate no matter how fertile the land is.

Citing an example, the director said, long before, no one was planting trees in the forest especially, the pawpaw trees "but now what do we see, we have to plant trees whenever we fell them because the animals are not there to do the spreading of seeds for trees and vegetation."

He mentioned that animals protect us by eating harmful insects, which are all over us especially in the evening when the lights are on. "We have these small insects which not many people know about, but other spiders eats them."

"With their droppings the animals enrich and sustain the land (soil) and give nutrients to trees in the forest."

Continuing, he said apart from their helping in growing of vegetation the animals are used for medicinal purposes, such use of the skin or bone of animals by rural folks to heal sicknesses and diseases since they cannot afford hospital expenses.

Proteins contained in animals give the rural poor who cannot afford to buy high protein foods their source of protein, however, they go hunting in the annual closed season in order to allow for the next annual generation of animals to grow.

He noted that the more reason why the organization is campaigning against the killing of wild animals, thus bush meat, is that hunters do not adhere to prescribed annual closed season on hunting by the Wildlife Division. For fear of their lives, the animals run way and never return again. This he lamented does not augur well for tourism attraction.

He made it known that human lives are really in danger because hunters use poisonous chemicals like cyanide, which is potent even after the targeted animal had died and the meat used for food. He mentioned DDT, a chemical used by hunters, as being equally harmful.

Aside of this, Nana Okyeame stated that not only do hunters kill the animals, but they also poison and destroy the plants and vegetation (crops) around where they used their chemicals in hunting. For instance, when hunters use AK 47 to spray targeted animals the harmful chemicals also gets to other plants and crop around which when used for food by humans become very harmful to their health.

Asked what is to be done to hunters who are still killing these poor wild animals, he said a law is soon to be enacted that no one should kill any wild animals and whoever is found doing so will be brought to book.

Culturally, Nana Okyeame said, "In Ghanaian tradition each clan used to come together to protect their totem, a particular animal that was sacred to them, but now due to modernization and urbanization these totems are threatened, endangered and getting extinct."

Talking about bush meat sellers, restaurant owners and chop bar operators, he said the organization had its first ever-national conference with these people, including the queen mothers, on the bush meat crisis and explained to them the knowledge about bush meat.

He also made known to them the dangers that the killing and wrong use of chemicals to these animals can do to both the environment and humans.

In his conclusion, the director of the organisation appealed to the public to help "say no to bush meat before the face of the earth is wiped off of these wild animals."

http://allafrica.com/stories/200302060333.html

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