Species protection, the changing informal economy, and the politics of access to the bushmeat trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Our understanding of the linkages between the bushmeat trade and the wider informal economy is limited. This lack of knowledge is particularly problematic for conservation under conditions of political instability, when the informal economy can be highly dynamic and impacts on wildlife populations can be severe. To explore these interlinked processes, we conducted a study of the bushmeat trade in Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo, through a combination of market surveys, semistructured interviews, and direct observation. We focused on the sale of protected and unprotected species in urban and rural markets, and the bushmeat commodity chains that supplied these markets, under conditions of political stability and armed conflict During peacetime, protected species from the park (predominantly elephant and buffalo) rarely appeared in the rural markets, but they comprised more than half of all bushmeat sales in the urban markets. This pattern reflected differences in the rural and urban commodity chains. Automatic weapons were required to hunt large protected species and were supplied to hunters by the military officers who controlled the urban trade. The use of such weapons was discouraged by the traditional chiefs, who administered the village markets. During wartime, the sales of protected species in the urban markets increased-fivefold because the military officers fled, leaving behind an open-access system that led to a massive increase in the exploitation of protected species. In contrast, the rural markets remained relatively stable because of the continued authority of the village chiefs. Our results indicate that sociopolitical factors can be an important determinant of species offtake and, therefore, that know ledge of the bushmeat commodity chain can be vital to controlling the processes that drive species extraction. In addition, our findings suggest that traditional authorities can be potentially valuable partners for bushmeat management.