22 Jan 2008
- Meat hungry refugees are sustaining a
thriving wildlife poaching trade in Tanzania,
according to a report by the wildlife trade
monitoring network TRAFFIC.
Wild meat, cooked after
dark in the refugee camps of northern Tanzania,
is called "night time spinach".
Generally cheaper than beef and culturally
more appetizing, poaching or trading wild
meat is one of the few income earning opportunities
available to refugees.
But the decimation of local wildlife in
widening areas around camps is threatening
the viability of established local non-refugee
communities that traditionally supplemented
their diet and income with wild foods.
“The scale of wild meat
consumption in refugee camps has helped
the international community to conceal its
failure of meeting basic refugee needs,”
said Dr George Jambiya, the main author
of the "Night Time Spinach’ report.
“Relief agencies are turning a blind eye
to the real cause of the poaching and illegal
trade: a lack of meat protein in refugees’
rations.”
Sheer numbers of refugees
often leads to extensive habitat degradation
and dramatic loss of wildlife in affected
areas, with rare species like chimpanzees
threatened by the demand for meat. Populations
of buffalo, sable antelope and other grazing
animals have also shown steep declines.
Since Tanzanian independence
in 1961, more than 20 major refugee camps
have been located close to game reserves,
national parks or other protected areas;
13 of them still remained in 2005. In the
mid-11000s, an estimated 7.5 tons of illegal
wild meat was consumed weekly in the two
main refugee camps.
TRAFFIC says that refugees
are doubly penalized: their rights to minimum
humanitarian care are not always being met
and their own attempts to meet them are
criminalized. In contrast, humanitarian
assistance to displaced populations in Croatia,
Slovenia and Serbia during the early 11000s
included the provision of corned beef.
“Something has to be
wrong if refugees, who have run from guns
in their home country, then find themselves
fleeing wildlife rangers’ firearms in their
search for food,” says Simon Milledge of
TRAFFIC and an author of the report.
Conservation organizations
believe the key is to supply meat from legal
and sustainable wild meat supplies, as well
as rigorous law enforcement on the ground.
“The sad reality is
that those who most depend upon wild sources
of food are usually the ones who pay the
heaviest price for biodiversity loss,” says
Dr Susan Lieberman, Director WWF’s International
Species Programme. “WWF calls upon humanitarian
agencies to provide for basic food security
of refugees, including animal protein, to
ensure a sustainable future for all.”
“The IUCN’s Red List
of Threatened Species shows that many of
Sub-Saharan Africa’s wildlife species are
threatened, with around 20 percent suffering
recorded population declines from the wild
meat trade,” said Dr Jane Smart, Head of
the World Conservation Union (IUCN)’s Global
Species Programme.
“Also the depletion of wildlife is likely
to cause an overall loss of income as areas
become devoid of species and of less interest
to visitors, which may cause economic impacts
as well as resentment by local people.”
The report recommends
closer partnerships between wildlife and
humanitarian agencies, which have already
showed progress to address other environmental
impacts of refugee camps such as deforestation.
