The bushmeat trade kills millions of wild primates annually across Central and West Africa, causing individual suffering through inhumane killing methods while driving population collapses in chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas.
Bushmeat hunting of primates intersects two distinct welfare concerns: the suffering of individual animals killed or captured in the trade, and the population-level welfare consequences of declining group sizes and social disruption for survivors. Killing methods used in subsistence and commercial bushmeat hunting — wire snares, shotguns, pit traps — frequently fail to kill rapidly, causing prolonged pain. Infants taken as pets following their mothers death experience acute grief and trauma and rarely survive long in inappropriate captive conditions. Addressing bushmeat welfare requires simultaneously reducing demand through urban market campaigns, improving enforcement in protected areas and providing alternative protein sources and livelihood options to communities that depend on wildlife for food security.