The bushmeat trade kills millions of wild primates annually, causing acute welfare harm during hunting and threatening population survival across Central and West Africa.
Bushmeat hunting causes welfare suffering across the entire trajectory from capture to death. Snare-trapped animals endure days of pain, stress, and progressive injury. Wounded primates escaping initial capture suffer infection and impaired movement. Primates killed for food experience the welfare costs of the killing method used. Beyond individual welfare, the bushmeat trade is eliminating populations of some of the world's most cognitively complex and socially sophisticated animals — species whose capacity for suffering most closely mirrors our own.