218 H. N. K. Sackey et al.


FIG. 1 The location of the three surveyed markets in Chiana, Sandema and Fumbisi in northern Ghana, and of Nazinga Game Ranch in Burkina Faso and Mole National Park and Gbele Game Production Reserve in Ghana.


set up mostly in groups according to their village of origin and hence each member of the survey team could reliably observe all traders within their assigned location in the mar- ket. Data on the condition of meat (live, fresh or smoked) were recorded and animal carcasses were weighed with a spring scale to convert prices per carcass/piece to prices per kg. Although most carcasses sold were whole, when pieces from body parts were encountered, we estimated the minimum number of individuals from a collection of body parts. For example, two hind legs from the same spe- cies would be recorded as one animal (Fa et al., 2015). Information on source and destination (for 89.8% of car- casses sold) and prices of carcasses were obtained from traders and by observing transactions. Not all information could be collected on individual carcasses (e.g. in situations where traders were in a hurry to sell their bushmeat, if the smoked carcasses were too delicate to be handled for weigh- ing or if the traders did not consent to their bushmeat being handled). In such cases, only the species were recorded. Good rapport with the traders facilitated data collection, so such situations were infrequent, except for obtaining data on weight as most carcasses were smoked. Some indi- vidual birds and monkeys were not identifiable to species and were therefore combined into grouped categories. To


maintain consistency in data collection, the composition of the survey team remained the same throughout the survey. We collected additional information regarding trading


activities, peak trading periods and other livelihoods through 21 interviews with traders on the markets and op- portunistic conversations held during the market surveys. For comparison, we also collected data (type, weight and price) for other types of animal protein sold, mainly fish and beef.


Data analysis


Statistical analyses were conducted using R 3.6.1 (R Core Team, 2019). We analysed the data collected for species composition and number of individual carcasses and com- pared the proportions for the three markets. A total of 41 market days were surveyed across all three markets (Sandema 18 days, Chiana 10 days, Fumbisi 13 days). Because of variation in the number of sampling sessions at the different markets, we reported trade volumes (car- casses and biomass) as mean quantities per sampling day in each market. This standardized our data and controlled for variation in sampling effort. We estimated and com- pared biomasses for the various wild animal groups traded


Oryx, 2023, 57(2), 216–227 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605322000096


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