718 L. Duonamou et al.
hunting is an important source of income for many rural populations in Africa (Wilkie et al., 2005), some species are buffered from such practices as they are not hunted because of their cultural value, or because of religious beliefs (Reuter et al., 2016; MacCarthy, 2018). For example, in the 1990sin Lalehumin Sierra Leone, thewestern chimpanzee Pan troglo- dytes verus was the species most commonly cited as taboo to eat and was not hunted for meat (Davies & Brown, 2008). High Niger National Park is one of the last remaining dry
forest–savannahmosaics inWest Africa, and is a priority site for the conservation of ungulates and thewestern chimpanzee (Fleury-Brugière & Brugière, 2001;Kormoset al., 2003). In Guinea, subsistence hunting of wildlife requires a permit and so, in theory, offtake could be regulated and sustainable (Saïdou & Djellouli, 2011). Nevertheless, many protected areas across West and Central Africa, including in Guinea, are affected by human activities such as hunting, agricul- ture andmining, and these activities remain poorly regulated (Brugière & Magassouba, 2009). National statistics on the bushmeat trade are not available for Guinea, but local-scale studies have indicated that bushmeat is the main source of animal protein for rural people, as in many other African countries (Humle & Konate, 2015). Commercial hunting for bushmeat is a serious threat to animal species across many protected areas as a result of a lack of law enforcement and unsustainable hunting practices. The failure to comply with hunting periods recommended by law and poor respect for the prohibition of hunting in strictly protected core areas therefore threaten the sustainability of wildlife resources (Dia, 2005). There were studies of bushmeat use in the Park during
1994–1996 (Ziegler, 1996)and in 2001 (Fleury-Brugière & Brugière, 2010). Both these studies focused onmarket surveys, revealing that the Park harbours a diverse mammalian fauna that is threatened by hunting, but did not seek to understand the drivers of the bushmeat trade or resource utilization. The existing regulations for the control of bushmeat trade in this area remain poorly enforced and protection efforts are incon- sistent across the Park (L.Duonamou&A. Konate, pers. obs., 2017). Here we explore how the bushmeat trade has evolved since these earlier studies, using data gathered in 2011 (Humle & Konate, 2015)and 2017. We focus on the species hunted, the number of carcasses recorded, biomass harvested, and the body size of hunted species and whether they are crop- foragers.We aimto provide critical information for the over- due update of the Park’smanagement plan (2006–2010)and help to understand local drivers of the bushmeat trade and to alleviate current pressures on wildlife within the Park.
Study area
The 12,470 km2 High Niger National Park lies in the north- east Republic of Guinea across the Prefectures of Kankan,
Kouroussa, Dabola and Faranah (Brugière et al., 2005). Circa 80,000 people live around the Park, with 44,407 of these in the Mafou area near the urban centre of Faranah, dominated by Malinke people, who are Muslim (Brugière et al., 2005). Islam as practised in the region traditionally prohibits the consumption of Suidae and primate species (Mbotiji, 2002). Mean annual rainfall is 1,200–1,700 mm and mean monthly temperature 17–25 °C, with a maxi- mum of 35 °C at the end of the dry season in April–May (Fleury-Brugière & Brugière, 2001; Ziegler et al., 2002). Agricultural activities in the region are concentrated within the Park’s buffer zones. Rice, maize, peanuts and cassava are the dominant crops and most people are engaged in farm- ing. The Park has two core areas, where human settlement or activity are strictly prohibited, and two buffer zones (c. 8,500 km2) that vary in the degree to which local people are permitted to harvest and utilize resources. The two strictly protected core areas are Mafou (554 km2) and Kouya (675 km2), separated by 60 km (Brugière et al., 2005). We focused our study on the Mafou sector, which has benefitted from most protection efforts since 2013. A collaboration between the Chimpanzee Conservation Center, the Park authorities and the United Nations Office for Project Services has facilitated the deployment of trained ecoguards in and around the Mafou core area (Fig. 1). The Park harbours c. 50% of all known mammal species in Guinea (Ziegler et al., 2002; Brugière & Magassouba, 2003), including the Vulnerable lion Pan- thera leo and Critically Endangered western chimpanzee (Kamyk, 2017; Humle et al., 2018).
Methods
Data on bushmeat hunting were collected during August– November 2017 in three rural villages (Sidakoro, Mansir- amoribaya and Koumandi Koura) in the Mafou sector of the Park and in the urban centre of Faranah. The three vil- lages each have a small market in which bushmeat is sold. Data collectionwas based on market surveys, for comparison and consistency with previous studies (Ziegler, 1996;Brugière & Magassouba, 2009). For each bushmeat item, we counted the number of carcasses and identified the species. For esti- mating biomass, we used themean body weight of each spe- cies (Kingdon, 2015). This was also used to categorize species by weight (,10, 10–50 and .50 kg). Based on local knowl- edge, species were categorized as non-pest (not reported to forage on crops), pest (forages on crops) or carnivore (reported to depredate livestock; Supplementary Table 3). To evaluate the temporal evolution of the bushmeat
trade, we compared our data with those collected in previ- ous studies. For the rural area, we compared our data to those of Humle & Konate (2015), gathered in 2011, and Brugière & Magassouba (2009), collected in 2001 across
Oryx, 2021, 55(5), 717–724 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319001443
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