The commercial bushmeat trade kills millions of wild primates annually across sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, with significant individual welfare impacts alongside conservation concerns.
Bushmeat hunting welfare impacts are severe and scale with the hunting method. Snares cause prolonged entanglement — animals struggle against wire for hours to days before being found, or escape with limbs damaged or severed. Shotgun hunting causes wounding injuries in which animals escape and die slowly. Infants clinging to killed mothers witness the death and are then often kept in traumatic conditions before entering the pet trade. The welfare solution requires addressing the structural conditions — poverty, protein access, enforcement capacity — that drive bushmeat hunting, rather than imposing prohibitions that fail communities with no alternatives.