Reframing conservation and development perspectives on bushmeat

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has drawn renewed attention to bushmeat consumption in the Global South, with the risks and consequences of zoonotic disease transmission proving critical for global public health. Conservation and development practitioners have long targeted bushmeat trade and consumption, seeking to reduce hunting pressures on wildlife and natural ecosystems by introducing alternative proteins and livelihoods to rural communities. While the shortcomings of these interventions have frequently been attributed to failures to integrate local perspectives and needs in program design, in this study we ask how the unexamined values of conservation and development practitioners themselves may contribute to the further marginalization of rural communities. We consider three prevalent framings of the “bushmeat crisis”: the juxtaposition of global conservation priorities against local resource use, the developmental distinction between industrial food production and bushmeat hunting practices, and the problems that arise when bushmeat consumption shifts to urban centers from rural communities. By turning our attention to the ideologies that structure interventions for bushmeat consumption and trade, this paper questions the imagined neutrality of conservation and development interventions. We highlight how moral valuations are embedded in the prioritization of the “global” good of biodiversity conservation, to the exclusion of local relations with these same species and ecosystems. At the same time, cultural biases privilege a developmental pathway away from dietary dependence on bushmeat. Finally, we note the substantive differences between urban and rural bushmeat consumption practices, often occluded in blanket condemnations of the wildlife trade. At a moment when bushmeat trade and consumption are broadly identified as the source of a devastating pandemic, it is ever more critical to ensure that future interventions for public health and conservation alike are based on a more nuanced understanding of the multiple and diverse actors, practices, and worldviews involved.