Conservation groups say they have found an unusual threat to East Africa's wildlife - hunting by hungry refugees.
(本篇節錄自bbc網站)
A report from the wildlife trade monitoring body Traffic says wild meat is covertly traded, cooked and consumed in Tanzanian refugee camps.
Traffic suspects species affected may include chimpanzee, buffalo and zebra.
Tanzania hosts more refugees than any other African nation, a legacy of conflicts in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The UN says there are more than half a million refugees in the country, mainly living in camps near the western border.
The border is also home to important wildlife refuges such as Gombe National Park, which achieved international fame as the site of Jane Goodall's pioneering studies of chimp behaviour.
Basic 'failure'
In its 60-page report, Traffic says the refugees are turning to wildlife because agencies supplying food are not providing meat.
"The scale of wild meat consumption in East African refugee camps has helped conceal the failure of the international community to meet basic refugee needs," said the report's principal author Dr George Jambiya.
"Relief agencies are turning a blind eye to the real cause of poaching and illegal trade - a lack of meat protein in refugees' rations."
The World Food Programme (WFP), which supplies food to more than 200,000 refugees in Tanzania, said it did not believe there was a big problem.
"To continue to meet the nutritional requirements of the refugees with meat as suggested by the report would require substituting canned meat for the much less expensive beans that we currently provide."
This would almost double the budget for food provision, WFP calculates.
Tale of decline
Traffic admits that the real scale of the hunting problem is not known, but offers a raft of observational evidence and first-person testimony to back its case.
In 1994, when intense ethnic fighting in Rwanda drove an estimated 600,000 refugees into the area of Tanzania surrounding Burigi National Park, wildlife in the park declined sharply.
Similar trends have been found in other parks near camps.
And when camps have closed, numbers have often recovered.
Traffic, which is a joint operation of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and WWF, recommends that refugee agencies and the Tanzanian government look for ways to increase the supply of meat protein to the refugees.
Livestock rearing, ranching of wild species, and regulated hunting are all measures that could help provide a sustainable supply of meat in some areas, the agency says.
key words:
Tanzania 坦尚尼亞 (他有跟我們邦交嗎= = ?)
Conservation group 保育團體
refugee 難民
threat 威脅
species 物種
consumption 消費\消耗量
conceal 隱蔽\隱瞞
illegal 非法的
turn a blind eye 視而不見(俗稱裝瞎)
nutritional 營養的 (nutrition 營養(名詞))
National Park 國家公園
hunting 打獵行動
livestock 家畜類
ranching 大農場
sustainable 足夠的 (sustain 供給 )
看到這個新聞, 小圓仔自己也會覺得很殘忍, 因為文章中所提到的有關為了這些猩猩們放棄自己女人青春的珍古德(Jane Goodall), 我也在discovery探索頻道中, 看過介紹她與猩猩的動物世界, 想像那種濫殺野生動物的畫面, 真的令人不敢恭維.
雖然這些難民們肚子太餓了, 不過那還是無法讓人接受.
希望WFP想出解決辦法, 應該是交他們釣魚而不是只給他們魚, 用最節約的方式找到營養平衡的好方法.