Menariknya TSP dari sektor perkebunan menjadi penyumbang terbesar yakni sekitar 55 persen dari total 137,39 miliar TSP tahun 2008. Kendati demikian, Riza mengakui pengelolaan TSP belum maksimal karena pengelolaanya langsung ditangani perusahaan, sehingga kurang selaras dengan agenda pembangunan daerah.Hal senada diungkapan Dr Moira Moeliono dari CIFOR. “Kendalanya, TSP selama ini dijalankan tidak sesuai dengan agenda pembangunan daerah,” ujarnya.

D’après Robert Nasi, l’un des auteurs du rapport, “le commerce de la viande de brousse est une composante importante mais largement ignore des économies de bon nombre de pays tropicaux”. D’après cet expert du Cifor, cette activité représente annuellement entre 42 et 205 millions de dollars pour les pays d’Afrique occidentale et centrale.

Deforestation also affects the carbon cycle warming up the atmosphere, and is responsible for 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon emissions every year, amounting to one-fifth of the global total. According to the Indonesia-based Centre for International Forestry Research, this is more than the combined total contributed by the world’s energy-intensive transport sectors. Some estimates put the contribution of deforestation to climate change at almost the same level as fossil fuel use in the United States.

Yet, a report from the Centre for International Forestry Research (Cifor), warns that a general ban on bush meat could be counterproductive in the long run. While the report, Conservation and Use of Wildlife-Based Resources: The Bushmeat Crisis, rings alarm bells on the depletion of wildlife, Cifor is worried that malnutrition could be rife in areas where the only source of protein could be bush meat.

The Center for International Forestry Research said increased hunting of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians in tropical forests is unsustainable. Report author Robert Nasi said significant number of forest mammals will become extinct in fewer than 50 years if current hunting levels persist, The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday. The center’s study calls for new policies to protect endangered species such as gorillas and elephants, while allowing sustainable hunting of common game that provides the primary source of protein to the poor.

The Centre for International Forestry Research, CIFOR, has warned against the uncontrolled hunting of bush meat, which it says is affecting the poor. According to a CIFOR press release, some Central African wildlife species will become extinct within 50 years unless “bush meat” hunting is controlled and local land use rights recognised. The upsurge in hunting bush meat including mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians in tropical forests, according to CIFOR, is unsustainable and poses serious threats to food security for poor inhabitants of forests in Africa, who rely largely on bush meat for protein. Going by the report, bush meat provides up to 80 percent of the protein and fat needed in rural diets in Central Africa. “If current levels of hunting persist in Central Africa, bush meat protein supplies will fall dramatically, and a significant number of forest mammals will become extinct in less than 50 years,” states Robert Nasi, the author of the report.

Similar article appeared in The Post (Buea)

TO MANY wildlife enthusiasts it will smack of heresy. A controversial plan put forward this week argues that to save species from extinction, the hunting of endangered animals for bushmeat should not be banned. Instead, the authors argue that the best way to reduce the slaughter is for hunting to be legalised and regulated, so that local communities rather than governments take charge of managing resources. Around 1000 terrestrial species are hunted for food, according to the report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a non-profit research institution. In central Africa, 1 million tonnes of bushmeat are harvested each year, supplying 80 per cent of the protein and fat that people in the region consume. Yet the haul is seldom sustainable.

This week, in a report on the global bushmeat crisis, the independent research organisation the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) draws attention to that 19th-century slaughter in an effort to put the current crisis in perspective and to set the scene for a highly controversial proposal: instead of demanding an outright ban on bushmeat hunting, it envisages the hunters as part of a possible solution (see “Should bushmeat hunting be legalised?”). The report argues that to stop people indiscriminately taking food that nature provides for free, it is essential to give them an incentive: a long-term stake in managing the resources available to them.