No Conservation Silver Lining to Ebola
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Pooley, SP
Fa, JE
Nasi, R
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In August 2014, the United Nations health authority declared
the Ebola epidemic centered on Sierra Leone,
Liberia, and Guinea an “international public health emergency”
(WHO 2014). By October, public commentaries
were omnipresent in print and online, including several
statements in the mass media by wildlife conservationists.
Their comments raise a number of uncomfortable issues
about the consumption and trade of bushmeat in the
region and in Africa more broadly that merit unpacking
and rebuttal. The Ebola epidemic should not, in our view,
be used as a Trojan horse to achieve wildlife conservation
ends. This is both because some of the proposed
conservation measures are of questionable efficacy, and
may even backfire, and because doing so raises unfortunate
associations with the long history of an outdated
discourse of conservation in Africa that favored wildlife
over people.
the Ebola epidemic centered on Sierra Leone,
Liberia, and Guinea an “international public health emergency”
(WHO 2014). By October, public commentaries
were omnipresent in print and online, including several
statements in the mass media by wildlife conservationists.
Their comments raise a number of uncomfortable issues
about the consumption and trade of bushmeat in the
region and in Africa more broadly that merit unpacking
and rebuttal. The Ebola epidemic should not, in our view,
be used as a Trojan horse to achieve wildlife conservation
ends. This is both because some of the proposed
conservation measures are of questionable efficacy, and
may even backfire, and because doing so raises unfortunate
associations with the long history of an outdated
discourse of conservation in Africa that favored wildlife
over people.
Date Issued
2015-01-08
Date Acceptance
2014-11-30
Citation
Conservation Biology, 2015, 29 (3), pp.965-967
ISSN
1523-1739
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
965
End Page
967
Journal / Book Title
Conservation Biology
Volume
29
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2015 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction
in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12454/pdf
Subjects
conservation
ebola
bushmeat
west africa
zoonoses
disease epidemic
wildlife
Publication Status
Published