WORLD WATCH •

Vision for a Sustainable World

M E A T
Now, It’s Not Personal!
But like it or not, meat-eating is becoming
a problem for everyone on the planet.

Excerpted from the July/August 2004 WORLD WATCH magazine

© 2004 Worldwatch Institute

For more information about Worldwatch Institute and its programs

and publications, please visit our website at www.worldwatch.org
 Now, It’s Not Personal!
But like it or not, meat-eating is becoming
a problem for everyone on the planet.

by the Editors

A
sk people where they’d rank meat-eating
as an issue of concern to the general
public, and most might be surprised to
hear you suggest that it’s an issue at
all. Whether you eat meat or not (or how much) is a Jochen Tack/Peter Arnold
private matter, they might say. Maybe it has some
implications for your heart, especially if you’re over- communities, and the spread of disease.
weight. But it’s not one of the high-profile public How did such a seemingly small matter of individ-
issues you’d expect presidential candidates or senators ual consumption move so rapidly from the margins of
to be debating—not up there with terrorism, the econ- discussion about sustainability to the center? To begin
omy, the war, or “the environment.” with, per-capita meat consumption has more than dou-
Even if you’re one of the few who recognize meat- bled in the past half-century, even as global population
eating as having significant environmental implications, has continued to increase. As a result, the overall
those implications may seem relatively small. Yes, there demand for meat has increased five-fold. That, in turn,
have been those reports of tropical forest being cut has put escalating pressure on the availability of water,
down to accommodate cattle ranchers, and native grass- land, feed, fertilizer, fuel, waste disposal capacity, and
land being destroyed by grazing. But at least until most of the other limited resources of the planet.
recently, few environmentalists have suggested that To provide an overview of just how central a chal-
meat-eating belongs on the same scale of importance lenge this once marginal issue has become, we decided
as the kinds of issues that have energized Amazon to survey the relevance of meat-eating to each of the
Watch, or Conservation International, or Greenpeace. major categories of environmental impact that have
Yet, as environmental science has advanced, it has conventionally been regarded as critical to the sustain-
become apparent that the human appetite for animal ability of civilization. A brief summary observation for
flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major each category is accompanied by quotes from a range
category of environmental damage now threatening the of prominent observers, some of whom offer sugges-
human future—deforestation, erosion, fresh water tions about how this difficult subject—not everyone
scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, bio- who likes pork chops or ribs is going to switch to tofu
diversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of without a fight—can be addressed.
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12 WORLD•WATCH July/August 2004

Deforestation
was the first major type of environ-
mental damage caused by the rise of
civilization. Large swaths of forest
were cleared for agriculture, which
included domestication of both edi-
ble plants and animals. Farm animals
take much more land than crops do
to produce a given amount of food
energy, but that didn’t really matter
over the 10 thousand years or so
when there was always more land to
be found or seized. In 1990, how- Peter Frischmuth/Peter Arnold
ever, the World Hunger Program at
Brown University calculated that recent world har- rainforest. “In a nutshell, cattle ranchers are making
vests, if equitably distributed with no diversion of grain mincemeat out of Brazil’s Amazon rainforests,” says
to feeding livestock, could provide a vegetarian diet to the Center’s director-general, David Kaimowitz.
6 billion people, whereas a meat-rich diet like that of —Environmental News Service
people in the wealthier nations could support only 2.6
billion. In other words, with a present population over
6 billion, that would mean we are already into deficit Grassland
consumption of land, with the deficit being made up destruction followed, as herds of
by hauling more fish from the oceans, which are in turn domesticated animals were expanded and the environ-
being rapidly fished out. In the near term, the only way ments on which wild animals such as bison and ante-
to feed all the world’s people, if we continue to eat meat lope had thrived were trampled and replanted with
at the same rate or if the population continues to grow monoculture grass for large-scale cattle grazing. In a
as projected, is to clear more forest. From now on, the review of Richard Manning’s 1995 book Grassland: The
question of whether we get our protein from animals History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the American
or plants has direct implications for how much more of Prairie, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer James Risser
the world’s remaining forest we have to raze. observes: “Many experience anguish at the wreckage of
clear-cut mixed-tree forest, destined to be replaced by
➨ In Central America, 40 percent of all the rainforests a single-species tree farm. Few realize, says Manning,
have been cleared or burned down in the last 40 that a waving field of golden wheat is the same thing—
years, mostly for cattle pasture to feed the export a crop monoculture inhabiting what once was a rich and
market—often for U.S. beef burgers…. Meat is too diverse but now ‘clear-cut’ grassland.”
expensive for the poor in these beef-exporting coun-
tries, yet in some cases cattle have ousted highly pro- ➨ Grassland covers more land area than any other
ductive traditional agriculture. ecosystem in North America; no other system has
—John Revington in World Rainforest Report suffered such a massive loss of life.
—Richard Manning in Grassland
➨ The Center for International Forestry Research
reports that rapid growth in the sales of Brazilian beef ➨ Another solution [to grassland depletion in Africa]
has led to accelerated destruction of the Amazon would be a shift from cattle grazing toward game
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July/August 2004 WORLD•WATCH 13

 species, we find that the
heaviest water use is by the
animals we raise for meat.
One of the easiest ways to
reduce demand for water
is to reduce the amount of
meat we eat.

➨ The standard diet of a

person in the United
States requires 4,200
gallons of water per day
(for animals’ drinking
water, irrigation of crops,
processing, washing,
cooking, etc.). A person
on a vegan diet requires
only 300 gallons a day.
—Richard H. Schwartz
in Judaism and
Steve Austin/Peter Arnold
Vegetarianism

ranching. Antelopes, unlike cattle, are adapted to ➨ A report from the International Water Management
semi-arid lands. They do not need to trek daily to Institute, noting that 840 million of the world’s peo-
waterholes and so cause less trampling and soil ple remain undernourished, recommends finding
compaction…. Antelope dung comes in the form of ways to produce more food using less water. The
small, dry pellets, which retain their nitrogen and report notes that it takes 550 liters of water to pro-
efficiently fertilize the soil. Cows, in contrast, produce duce enough flour for one loaf of bread in develop-
large, flat, wet droppings, which heat up and quickly ing countries…but up to 7,000 liters of water to
lose much of their nitrogen (in the form of ammo- produce 100 grams of beef.
nia) to the atmosphere…. An experimental game —UN Commission on Sustainable Development,
ranch in Kenya has been a great economic success “Water— More Nutrition Per Drop,” 2004
while simultaneously restoring the range.
— Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, and
➨ Let’s say you take a shower every day…and your
showers average seven minutes…and the flow rate
Gretchen C. Daily in The Stork & The Plow
through your shower head is 2 gallons per minute….
You would use, at that rate, [5,110] gallons of water
Fresh water, like land, seemed to shower every day for a year. When you compare
inexhaustible for most of the first 10 millennia of civ- that figure, [5,110] gallons of water, to the amount
ilization. So, it didn’t seem to matter how much a cow the Water Education Foundation calculates is used
drank. But a few years ago, water experts calculated that in the production of every pound of California beef
we humans are now taking half the available fresh (2,464 gallons),you realize something extraordinary.
water on the planet—leaving the other half to be In California today, you may save more water by not
divided among a million or more species. Since we eating a pound of beef than you would by not show-
depend on many of those species for our own survival ering for six entire months.
(they provide all the food we eat and oxygen we — John Robbins in The Food Revolution:
breathe, among other services), that hogging of water How Your Diet Can Help Save Your
poses a dilemma. If we break it down, species by Life and the World
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14 WORLD•WATCH July/August 2004

Waste disposal, like water way. We can begin the cycle with growing the grain to
supply, seemed to have no practical limitations. There feed the cattle, which requires a heavy input of petro-
were always new places to dump, and for centuries leum-based agricultural chemicals. There’s the fuel
most of what was dumped either conveniently decom- required to transport the cattle to slaughter, and thence
posed or disappeared from sight. Just as you didn’t to market. Today, much of the world’s meat is hauled
worry about how much water a cow drank, you didn’t thousands of miles. And then, after being refrigerated,
worry about how much it excreted. But today, the it has to be cooked.
waste from our gargantuan factory farms overwhelms
the absorptive capacity of the planet. Rivers carrying live- ➨ It takes the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline to pro-
stock waste are dumping so much excess nitrogen into duce a pound of grain-fed beef in the United States.
bays and gulfs that large areas of the marine world are Some of the energy was used in the feedlot, or in
dying (see Environmental Intelligence, “Ocean Dead transportation and cold storage, but most of it went
Zones Multiplying,” p. 10). The easiest way to reduce to fertilizing the feed grain used to grow the modern
the amount of excrement flowing down the Mississippi steer or cow…. To provide the yearly average beef
and killing the Gulf of Mexico is to eat less meat, consumption of an American family of four requires
thereby reducing the size of the herds upstream in over 260 gallons of fossil fuel.
Iowa or Missouri. —“Meat Equals War,” web-site of Earth Save,
Humboldt, California
➨ Giant livestock farms, which can house hundreds of
thousands of pigs, chickens, or cows, produce vast ➨ It takes, on average, 28 calories of fossil fuel energy
amounts of waste. In fact, in the United States, these to produce 1 calorie of meat protein for human con-
“factory farms” generate more than 130 times the sumption, [whereas] it takes only 3.3 calories of fos-
amount of waste that people do. sil-fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of protein from
— Natural Resources Defense Council grain for human consumption.
—David Pimentel, Cornell University
➨ According to the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, livestock waste has polluted more than ➨ The transition of world agriculture from food grain
27,000 miles of rivers and contaminated ground- to feed grain represents a new form of human evil,
water in dozens of states. with consequences possibly far greater and longer
— Natural Resources Defense Council lasting than any past wrongdoing inflicted by men
against their fellow human beings. Today, more
➨ Nutrients in animal waste cause algal blooms, which than 70 percent of the grain produced in the United
use up oxygen in the water, contributing to a “dead States is fed to livestock, much of it to cattle.
zone” in the Gulf of Mexico where there’s not enough — Jeremy Rifkin, Los Angeles Times,
oxygen to support aquatic life. The dead zone 27 May 2002
stretched over 7,700 square miles during the sum-
mer of 1999. ➨ [Feeding grain to animals is] highly inefficient, and
— Natural Resources Defense Council an absurd use of resources.
—Vaclav Smil, University of Manitoba

Energy
consumption, until ver y Global warming is driven
recently, may have seemed to most of us to be an by energy consumption, to the extent that the princi-
issue for refrigerators, but not for the meat and milk pal energy sources are carbon-rich fuels that, when
inside. But as we give more attention to life-cycle analy- burned, emit carbon dioxide or other planet-blanket-
sis of the things we buy, it becomes apparent that the ing gases. As noted above, the production and delivery
journey that steak made to get to your refrigerator of meat helps drive up the use of such fuels. But live-
consumed staggering amounts of energy along the stock also emit global-warming gases directly, as a by-
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July/August 2004 WORLD•WATCH 15

 methane emissions.
Latin America has the
highest regional emis-
sions per capita, due pri-
marily to large cattle
populations in the beef-
exporting countries
(notably Brazil and
Argentina).
—United Nations Envi-
ronment Programme,
Unit on Climate Change

➨ Belching, flatulent live-

stock emit 16 percent
of the world’s annual
production of methane,
a powerful greenhouse
gas.

Jorgen Schytte/Peter Arnold

—Brian Halweil and
Danielle Nierenberg
product of digestion. Cattle send a significant amount in State of the World 2004
of methane, a potent global-warming gas, into the air.
The environmental group Earth Save recommends a ➨ Fight Global Warming With Your Knife and Fork
major reduction in the world’s cattle population, which —Article by Elysa Hammond in
currently numbers about 1.3 billion. Sustainablebusiness.com

➨ One ton of methane, the chief agricultural green-

house gas, has the global warming potential of Food productivity
23 tons of carbon dioxide. A dairy cow produces of farmland, as noted above, is
about 75 kilograms of methane a year, equivalent gradually falling behind population growth. When
to over 1.5 [metric] tons of carbon dioxide. The Paul Ehrlich warned three decades ago that “hundreds
cow, of course, is only doing what comes naturally. of millions” of people would starve, he turned out to
But people are inclined to forget, it seems, that have overstated the case—for now. (Only tens of mil-
farming is an industry. We cleared the land, sowed lions starved.) The green revolution, an infusion of fer-
the pasture, bred the stock, and so on. It’s a human tilizers and mass-production techniques, increased
business, not a natural one. We’re pretty good at crop yields and bought us time. That, combined with
it, which is why atmospheric concentrations of more complete utilization of arable land through
methane increased by 150 percent over the past intensified irrigation and fertilization, enabled us to
250 years, while carbon dioxide concentrations more or less keep pace with population growth for
increased by 30 percent. another generation. A little additional gain—but only
— Pete Hodgson, New Zealand Minister for a little—may come from genetic engineering. Short of
Energy, Science, and Fisheries stabilizing population (which will take another half-
century), only one major option remains: to cut back
➨ There is a strong link between human diet and sharply on meat consumption, because conversion of
methane emissions from livestock…. As beef con- grazing land to food crops will increase the amount
sumption rises or falls, the number of livestock will, of food produced. (Some argue that grazing can use
in general, also rise or fall, as will the related land that is useless for crops, and in these areas live-
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16 WORLD•WATCH July/August 2004

stock may continue to
have a role, but large
areas of arable land are
now given to cattle to
roam and ruin.)

➨ Let’s say we have

20,000 kcal [kilocalo-
ries] of corn. Assume
that we feed it to cattle
(as we do with about
70 percent of the
grain produced in the
U.S.)…. The cow will
produce about 2,000
kcal of usable energy
from that 20,000 kcal of
corn (assuming 10 per-
cent efficiency; the
efficiency is actually
C. Thiriet/Peter Arnold
somewhat higher than
that, but 10 percent is easy to work with and illus-
trates the point reasonably). That 2,000 kcal of beef Communicable
would support one person for a day, assuming a disease doesn’t travel from one place to
2,000 kcal per day diet, which is common in the another all by itself; it has to hitchhike—whether in dirty
U.S. If instead people ate the 20,000 kcal of corn water, the infected blood of rats or insects, or con-
directly, instead of passing it through the cow, we taminated meat. Globalization has vastly increased the
would be able to support more people for that given mobility of all of these media, and one consequence is
unit of land being farmed; not necessarily 10 times that outbreaks which in past centuries might have been
more, because people are not as efficient as cattle contained within a single village or country until they
at using corn energy, but considerably more than the died out are now quickly spread around the globe.
one that could be supported if the corn were passed When a case of mad cow disease was detected in the
through the cow first! United States in 2004, it was discovered that parts of
[So], we could support more people on Earth that single cow had been distributed to about a dozen
for a given area of land farmed if we ate lower on different states. The problem of containing outbreaks
the food chain—if we ate primary producers in a system of global distribution is exacerbated by the
instead of eating herbivores (corn instead of beef). use of mass-production facilities that rely on antibiotics
Or, we could support the same number of people rather than more costly cleaning of facilities to fend off
as at present, but with less land degradation infection and disease. As antibiotic resistance increases
because we wouldn’t need to have so much land worldwide, the movement of diseases becomes increas-
in production…. ingly unimpeded. Some of the most dangerous out-
— Patricia Muir, Oregon State University breaks result from the growing illegal trade in bush
meat, in which diseases harbored by forest primates,
➨ While 56 million acres of U.S. land are producing hay such as HIV—which in the past might have remained
for livestock, only 4 million acres are producing veg- sequestered in remote jungles—are now brought into
etables for human consumption. an unregulated global marketplace.
— U.S. Department of Commerce,
Census of Agriculture ➨ A report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture esti- ✦

July/August 2004 WORLD•WATCH 17

 west-central Africa may be
the original source of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic, and that
the transmission of the
virus, a simian immunode-
ficiency virus (SIV), to
humans was the result of
blood exposures from the
handling of chimpanzees
killed by hunters.
— Jane Goodall, from a
lecture at Harvard
Medical School, 2002

Lifestyle
disease,
especially heart disease,
might not have been
regarded as an “environ-
© Lyle Rosbotham mental” problem a genera-
mates that 89 percent of U.S. beef ground into pat- tion ago. But it’s now clear that the vast majority of
ties contains traces of the deadly E. coli strain. public health problems are environmental, rather than
genetic, in nature. Moreover, most preventable dis-
— Reuters News Service eases result from complex relationships between
humans and the environment, rather than from sin-
➨ Animal waste contains disease-causing pathogens,
such as Salmonella, E. coli, Cryptosporidium, and gle causes. Heart disease is linked to obesity resulting
fecal coliform, which can be 10 to 100 times more both from excessive consumption of sugar and fat
concentrated than in human waste. More than 40 dis- (especially meat fat) and from lack of exercise facili-
eases can be transferred to humans through manure. tated by car-oriented urban design. The environ-
mental problems of suburban sprawl, air pollution,
— Natural Resources Defense Council fossil-fuel consumption, and poor land-use policies are
also all factors in heart disease.
➨ According to the World Health Organization, more
than 85 human deaths have resulted from at least 95
cases of ebola reported in the Congo’s remote ➨ The irony of the food production system is that mil-
Cuvette-Ouest region. The tip-off to a possible out- lions of wealthy consumers in developed countries
break came when gorillas in the region began dying. are dying from diseases of affluence—heart attacks,
Tests of their bodies confirmed the cause of death…. strokes, diabetes, and cancer—brought on by gorg-
Officials suspect the human outbreak stems from vil- ing on fatty grain-fed beef and other meats, while the
lagers eating infected primates including chimps, poor in the Third World are dying of diseases of
monkeys, and gorillas…. When primates are poverty brought on by being denied access to land
butchered and handled for bushmeat, humans come to grow food grain for their families.
into contact with contaminated blood. People also — Jeremy Rifkin, Los Angeles Times
get the disease when they eat the infected meat.
➨ Who says meat is high in saturated fat? This politi-
—Ebola Outbreak Linked to Bushmeat, cally correct nutrition campaign is just another exam-
www.janegoodall.net ple of the diet dictocrats trying to run our lives.
➨ It is believed that a sub-species of chimpanzee in —Sam Abramson, CEO, Springfield Meats
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18 WORLD•WATCH July/August 2004

➨ Meat contributes an extraordinarily significant per- protections against poaching and black-marketeering
centage of the saturated fat in the American diet. of bushmeat. It will also require more equitable dis-
— Marion Nestle, chair of the Department of tribution of the world’s limited food output, and of
Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, the income with which to buy it.
New York University
➨ The real trouble has come in the last 10 years or so,
➨ Not only is mortality from coronary heart disease as the big multinational companies, particularly
lower in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians, but European companies, are opening up the [central
vegetarian diets have also been successful in arrest- African] forest with their roads. Hunters from the
ing coronary heart disease. Scientific data suggest towns can use the logging trucks to go along the
positive relationships between a vegetarian diet roads…. They shoot everything from elephants
and reduced risk for…obesity, coronary artery dis- down to gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, monkeys,
ease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and some birds—everything. They smoke it, they load it on the
types of cancer. trucks and take it into the cities, where it’s not to feed
—American Dietetic Association starving people—it’s where people will pay more for
bushmeat than for domesticated meat…. The pygmy
➨ He is a heavy eater of beef. Me thinks it doth harm hunters who’ve lived in harmony with the forest
to his wit. world for hundreds of years are now being given
— William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night guns and ammunition and paid to shoot for the log-
ging camps. And that’s absolutely not sustainable.”
➨ The average age (longevity) of a meat eater is 63. I — Jane Goodall in Benefits Beyond Boundaries, a
am on the verge of 85 and still work as hard as ever. film by Television Trust for the Environment
I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die; shown on BBC in 2003
but I simply cannot do it. A single beef-steak would
finish me; but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I ➨ The animals have gone, the forest is silent, and
am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is when the logging camps finally move, what is left for
the only disadvantage of vegetarianism. the indigenous people? Nothing.
— George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) — Jane Goodall in Benefits Beyond Boundaries

Biodiversity loss and

A
lbert Einstein, who was better known
threat of extinction: for his physics and math than for his
Above and beyond the destruction of forests and interest in the living world, once said:
grasslands for cattle ranching, and the creation of “Nothing will benefit human health
oceanic dead zones by manure-laden runoff, the and increase chances of survival of life on Earth as
growing traffic in bush-meat is decimating the much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” We don’t
remaining populations of gorillas, chimpanzees, and think he was just talking about nutrition. Notice that
other primates that are being killed for their meat. (A in this article we haven’t said much at all about the role
photo we received but declined to print in this issue of meat in nutrition, even though there’s a lot more to
shows a severed gorilla’s head sitting in a food bas- talk about than heart disease. Nor have we gone into
ket next to a bunch of bananas). As the planet the ethics of vegetarianism, or of animal rights. The pur-
becomes more crowded, poor populations are increas- pose of those omissions is not to brush off those con-
ingly venturing into wildlife reserves looking for cerns, but to point out that on ecological and economic
meat—and not always just for their own subsistence. grounds alone, meat-eating is now a looming problem
In these areas, it’s not enough just to say “eat less for humankind. You don’t have to have any conscience
meat.” Here, the long-term solution will depend on at all to know that the age of heavy meat-eating will
stemming the building of logging roads (which facil- soon be over as surely as will the age of oil—and that
itate more rapid invasion by hunters) and stronger the two declines are linked.
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July/August 2004 WORLD•WATCH 19

 When and reptiles. The meat
is cut up and smoked,
Primates then transported to
Become town. There, the urban
elite will pay more for
Bush- bushmeat than for
meat chicken or goat. It is
their cultural preference.
by Jane Goodall The trade is not
sustainable. And the
In 1960 I began to study situation is made worse
the chimpanzees of because indigenous
what is now the Gombe hunters are paid to shoot
National Park in Tanzania meat for the logging
(then Tanganyika). Dur- camps—for maybe 2,000
Silvia Aloisi/REUTERS ©2002

ing 44 years of uninter- people who were not

rupted study, we have there before.
been amazed to find how The Jane Goodall
like us chimpanzees are, Institute is one of seven
biologically and behav- NGOs taking part in the
iorally. For example, their A baby chimpanzee in a quarantine cage at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanc- Congo Basin Forest
DNA differs from ours by tuary (www.tacugama.com) in Sierra Leone, which since 1995 has rescued Partnership, which with
dozens of animals from the pet trade, bushmeat hunters, and a decade-long
only 1 percent and they funding from the U.S.
civil war. New arrivals are kept in quarantine for several months to avoid
can catch or be infected spreading any infectious disease they might have caught from humans. The Department of State and
by all human contagious chimps are then released into a 100-acre forest reserve. the European Union, is
diseases. The brains of seeking to curtail the
chimpanzees and humans are anatomically similar, and bushmeat trade. We are working in partnership with other
chimpanzees have intellectual capacities once thought NGOs, government officials, donor agencies, and logging
unique to us. They show emotions very similar to those and mining companies. We are trying to educate and
which we call happiness, sadness, fear, or despair. There is involve the local people, making them our partners and
a five to six year period when the child is dependent on helping to improve their lives (as we do in our TACARE
the mother and when social learning occurs not only program around Gombe).
through trial and error, but also, as with humans, through If the bushmeat trade continues as it has, the great
observation, imitation, and practice. Strong, enduring apes could become all but extinct in the Congo Basin
emotional bonds develop, and the child may itself die of within the next 15 years or so. Other animals, too, will
grief after the death of his or her mother, even when phys- become extinct, endangered, or threatened. Eventually,
iologically capable of surviving without her milk. It is sad unless we succeed, almost all the wondrous animals of the
to find that chimpanzees, who have taught us so much Congo Basin will be gone. We must not let this happen.
about our place in the animal world, are disappearing in In our work we are helped by the more than 115
the wild. A century ago, there must have been some 2 orphan chimpanzees in our Tchimpounga Sanctuary. Most
million of them in Africa. Today, there are 150,000 at of their mothers were shot for food. We encourage the local
most. The decline is due in part to habitat destruction, as people, especially school children, to visit the sanctuary. And
human populations increase and need ever more land for when these visitors see our chimpanzees embracing, kissing
crops, livestock, and settlements. and holding hands, using objects as tools—and when they
But the greatest threat is the bushmeat trade—the gaze into their eyes, close up—they realize how human-like
commercial hunting of wild animals for food. For hundreds these beings are. Many visitors, as they leave, have been
of years the indigenous people have lived in harmony with heard to say that they shall never again eat a chimpanzee or
their forest world, killing just enough animals to feed their visit a restaurant that serves chimpanzee meat. These
families and villages. Now, things have changed. In the orphans are truly ambassadors for their wild relatives.
1980s foreign logging companies moved into the last of We continue to see other reasons for hope, as more
the great African rain forests. And even if they practice so- and more people around the world begin to understand
called “sustainable logging,” they open up the forests with the danger and want to help. If we lose hope, we lose the
roads. It is these roads that are the problem. Hunters ride battle, for without it we fall into apathy—and the killing
the logging trucks to the end of a road and shoot every- and eating will continue until our closest living relatives in
thing from elephants and chimpanzees to antelopes, birds the wild are gone.
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20 WORLD•WATCH July/August 2004