Archive Interview - Karl Ammann
 ...award
winning photographer who is focusing world attention on
the plight of wild animals caught up in the crisis of the
bush meat trade. Cool Green World met with him to learn
more..
Cool Green World: For those to whom the term may be new,
could you briefly explain what is meant by "The Bush Meat
Crisis?"
Karl Ammann: Briefly, it's the fact that the traditional
eating of wild game species has, in the last few years,
gotten a lot more commercial with the event of the logging
industry getting into every part of the central African
rainforest. It has gone from subsistence hunting to commercial
hunting of wildlife--and that is what the bush meat crisis
is today.
CGW: Is it worse for any particular species?
KA: Yes, the bigger the species the more protein they represent
and the easier they are to hunt, the more likely they are
to get shot. So, the bigger ones, like the elephants and
gorillas and chimps, get hit very regularly. So do the buffalo
and the forest hogs.
CGW: How did you get involved in documenting this?
KA: That goes back about 8 or 9 years, when I did a trip
on a Zaire riverboat. There were a lot of carcasses, smoked
and fresh, coming on board and I started wondering what
the basis for all this was: the motivation of the people
who were trading it; who their buyers were; who the sellers
were; who the hunters were; who brought it on board. I decided
to try to look into it and see what made this trade go round.
CGW: So what are you actively involved with now?
KA: At this stage, it has become a question of still creating
more awareness. Here in the US, it's still hardly known,
even among some of the conservation experts, that there's
a problem out there. In Europe, we have made a little bit
more progress. So, creating awareness is still an aspect,
but then also doing something, which means essentially fund
raising for projects which, hopefully, will improve things
on the ground.
 CGW:
So what is the worst scenario, if nothing gets done?
KA: The worst scenario is that we will soon have only pocket
populations left of gorillas and chimps and forest elephants
and other species and they may no longer be viable populations
in genetic terms--there will be no corridors between these
different populations. They won't become extinct overnight
but the fragmentation of these populations will become an
issue in the near future.
CGW: How soon are you talking about?
KA: In some areas, it has probably already happened. In
some areas, it's going to happen within the next 10 years.
With the logging industry cutting down these forests, I
think the gorilla and chimp populations will decline by
50% within the next 5 to 7 years.
CGW: What do you think it's going to take for people
and conservation groups to get involved and realize how
serious the problem actually is?
KA: If they accept our data, if they accept that it is
a crisis, then maybe the time has come to get together and
try to coordinate things and I think that's the next step--to
form an alliance between the conservation groups rather
than working against each other, trampling on each other's
toes; to come up with a formalized interest of all our concerns.
If that happens, maybe we can make some progress.
CGW: In terms of numbers, how many chimpanzees and gorillas
are being slaughtered each year?
KA: We calculated, for one corner of the Cameroon, about
800 gorillas per year. That's about one third of their range
in the Cameroon. So, if you take that across Gabon and Congo,
we're probably talking several thousand animals a year are
eaten.
CGW: Who do you think is ultimately responsible for
the problem?
KA: Ultimately, the person who eats bush meat is creating
the demand which gets the hunter to go out there. It's generally
the middle class in town who are fueling the commercial
side of the trade--they have the disposable income. It's
more expensive than beef or pork, so it's a luxury commodity
in most cases. So, they fuel this trade. The loggers, who
are European in most cases, make it possible by having created
the infrastructure which allows this meat to get to the
market. In the end, the responsibility has to be shared:
the governments don't enforce their own laws and tend to
look the other way; the conservation community up till now
has kind of been looking the other way too, because there
have been no easy solutions to the problem. So there are
lots of players and lots of guilt to be allocated.
CGW: Why do you think the governments aren't enforcing
the regulations? Is it a matter of money?
KA: Obviously, they will say it's resources, but just politically
it's not a very easy decision. They claim economic crisis
scenarios: people surviving by killing wild animals; people
participating by trading in the meat, so a lot of people
are starting to benefit from this trade and to cut it down
would represent economic hardship for some of these people.
So, the government prefers to look the other way. It's short
sighted, but it's a typical politician's outlook in Africa
today.
CGW: Have people always eaten these animals or is this
a new trend?
KA: I think one can say that throughout most of the range
chimps, gorillas, elephants, most of these species, have
been eaten. There used to be taboos in some parts in some
of the tribal groups. Some of these taboos are now breaking
down in modern society and the hunters have found ways to
get around some of them as well by essentially disguising
meat. If there's a taboo about eating great apes in an area,
they will cut up the carcass and present it as essentially
buffalo, so they get around that.
CGW: How do you view the eating of primates? Would you
equate it with cannibalism?
KA: With chimps, we are dealing with a creature which has
a 98.6% genetically human code. So "Yes," they come pretty
close to us. They are our closest animal relative. Eating
them, in my opinion, comes relatively close to cannibalism.
The missionaries and the colonial powers were very effective
a hundred years ago in wiping out cannibalism, so maybe
it's time to start on 98.6% cannibalism.
CGW: What do you see as the solutions to the whole problem?
KA: There's the stick and the carrot approach and I think
that's still a valid one--to show the government that the
Western world cares, to link aid and donor assistance more
to environmental performance. For example, with human rights,
everybody rates countries by their human rights records
and you don't help them and you don't provide aid money
if they don't "pull up their socks." Nothing like that is
happening on the environmental front and I think that's
the first step--the bigger stick to create more awareness
and to push Western governments in applying those kind of
criteria, when it comes to donor funding and aid. But there
also have to be some carrots--if the governments are willing
to cooperate and willing to enforce their law, they do need
help. So, it's a question of finding resources and working
with them to do things on the ground. It's obvious that
if you tell a hunter he's no longer allowed to hunt, what's
he going to do? So, there is a need to create some jobs
and alternative resources for these people to live on. But
the carrots need money and the money needs to be raised
first.
CGW: So, is the primary way that members of the public
can help really the fund raising at the moment?
KA: We haven't really got to the point of setting up a
structure for fund raising in the US, but that's what's
happening now and "Yes," the public will be asked at some
stage to help, but, as I say, the governments can help as
well--there should be resources made available on a donor
basis to work on conservation issues.
CGW: Are you involved with the Great Ape Project?
KA: I'm involved with the people at the Great Ape Project.
They have used the data and so on to make their case. I
think the philosophical side is very well established and
they would now like to go more into the conservation front
as well. So, we hope to work with them very closely.
CGW: Your photography is pretty graphic and certainly
conveys the point. Is this the primary way you hope to raise
awareness?
KA: That's how it started out; I'm a photographer. As it
turned out, it's not such a powerful media. It was quite
often very difficult to get these photographs published.
It turned out that television was more powerful. When the
World Society for the Protection of Animals came into the
picture, they said: "We cannot build a campaign just on
photographs. We have to get video footage." So, we got the
video footage and it was much easier to get the video footage
across to a wider public on TV than photographs ever were.
I'm a photographer, but I have accepted the fact that the
television media is a lot more powerful in this context.
CGW: Are there any points regarding the bush meat crisis
that you would like to add?
KA: I know that the American public probably is pretty
fed up with African crisis scenarios. There seem to be so
many of them--new ones every year. The feeling is we have
our own problems and these guys should start helping themselves.
I suppose that's a fair enough reaction. So the question
really seems to arise: "Why should I care if a bunch of
locals eat a bunch of primates?" There is an angle to this
that brings it down to all of us--and that is the virus
angle. The fact that beef can be a conduit for mad cow disease
just gives us an indication what potential there is when
we eat our closest relatives. While I don't want to go into
details, probably some of these viruses are already with
us and already cost us millions, if not billions, of dollars
a year and they probably came that route. The way the trade
is going there are potentially a lot more of those viruses
out there and they might cost us a lot more in the long-term
than it would cost us now to take some preventive steps.
CGW: Do you see any cooperation between zoos, who claim
to be the ambassadors between the public and wild animals,
and your work?
KA: If you see what's happening to the zoos here in America,
they have improved a lot. The public, it appears, is now
very well aware of what a happy animal and an unhappy animal
looks like, so the zoos have to create happy environments
which seems to cost them a lot of money. That money they
seem to find. I believe the San Diego Zoo spent some $12
million on the new gorilla enclosure--that's hundreds, thousands,
if not millions of dollars per animal. If only 10% of that
kind of money were available to conserve the species in
the wild, you could go a very long way. So, obviously, the
zoos have the ways to raise these resources and they should
accept a certain responsibility to conservation issues by
putting them back into where the wild population can be
helped.
You can learn more about Karl Ammann and his work at
his website. Go
there now!
|
