Lemur carnage in Madagascar as governance collapses

When society breaks down, so do the supply chains. People will eat.

Here in the USA, if things broke down, those nice geese grazing on lawns everywhere would be dinner, as would be the squirrels, deer, and every other living thing that could be eaten.

It's how things go when the normal society is in disarray.

The answer is to stabilize the society and provide some calm and order. Not so easy a task, though...

This is probably one of the more common Malthusian misunderstandings of the bush meat trade in Africa.

People don't eat bush meat (like lemur) because other food isn't available. It's a delicacy that rich people eat as a novelty or for reasons of status or superstition. Notice the article says that lemur is being sold "to restaurants" as "delicacies." The same is true in Central Africa and West Africa. There the bush meat trade is geared toward the relatively well off.

Poor people don't eat "delicacies" from restaurants; they eat chicken and other farm products in their homes.

Think of it as analogous to rhino poaching. Rhinos aren't being killed because poor, hungry people need to eat rhino meat because the food supply is breaking down. Rhinos are killed because some well off people have a bizarre belief that rhino horn is a medicine or that rhino horn knife handles give them status.

The expansion of bush meat trade is related to the break down of law and order, however, because the underfunding or collapse of the parks services and anti-poaching forces is what allows the bush meat poachers to do their grisly work.

Somehow, it goes against the grain.

I mean, millions of years fighting to get to the top of the food chain and we're eating our own cousins.

It ain't right.