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Hungry refugees eat chimps
22/01/2008 21:15 - (SA)
Nairobi - Hungry refugees in Tanzania are eating chimpanzees and other endangered species in order to supplement their meagre diet, an international conservation group said on Tuesday.
Traffic said refugees living near national parks in northwestern Tanzania were also illegally hunting buffalo, topi, eland, elephant and waterbuck.
"The scale of wild meat consumption in east African refugee camps has helped conceal the failure of the international community to meet basic refugee needs," said George Jambiya, the report's lead author.
Traffic, whose report was based on studies carried out in 2005 and 2006, said refugees were being denied adequate nutrition and then punished when caught seeking bush meat.
"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," said report co-author Simon Milledge.
"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," he said.
Traffic said game consumption soared to an estimated 7.5 tonnes of illegal bush meat per week in two refugee camps in the mid-1990s, when refugee numbers in Tanzania hit a peak of more than 800 000.
The report did not give more recent consumption figures.
The illegal bush meat trade has also caused a drop in government revenues from lucrative licensed sport hunting and game viewing, it said, adding that aid and conservation groups should work more closely together to help reverse the damage.
Since the east African nation's independence in 1961, more than 20 major refugee camps have been established close to game reserves, national parks or other protected areas. Of these, 13 still existed in 2005, Traffic said.
According to the UN refugee agency Tanzania hosted 11 camps in January 2007, housing 287 061 refugees, down from 350 590 in 2005.
Most of the refugees fled conflict in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo from as far back as the 1960s, and Rwanda in the 1990s.
- Reuters
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