Handbook on Measures for Increasing Food Availability by Promoting the Use of Edible Wildlife Resources

Abstract

Africa has a very abundant and highly diversified variety of wildlife particularly those animals belonging to the order of Artiodactyls. There are reported to be more than 130 million hectares of game reserves in sub-Saharan Africa (Asibey and Child, 199I). But then, wildlife is only one element in the range of resources that the forests have to offer mankind. The use of wildlife for food and nutritional purposes goes back to time immemorial and might be said to go back to the origin of mankind. For thousands of years, mankind has been eating game meat and prehistoric man depended on it for his protein requirements. Eating habits evolved on the basis of what people could find to eat even though we have taboos, restriction and preferences which have been handed down the ages.