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Scientists now have hard data to show European fishing policies are driving some of the bushmeat trade in Africa.

The market for wild animal meat, which threatens to wipe out a myriad of species, has become a major issue of conservation concern in recent years.

Dr Justin Brashares and colleagues tell Science magazine that consumption of bushmeat in Ghana rises whenever the supply of fish in the country falls.

The region is blighted by overfishing, much of it by EU-subsidised trawlers.

“We took annual estimates of wildlife abundance and compared them with per capita fish supply and found that years of below average fish catches had greater declines of wildlife on land,” said Dr Brashares, from the universities of California-Berkeley, US, and Cambridge, UK.

“People in Ghana turned to bushmeat when fish became unavailable.”

West Africa has a large indigenous fishing effort trawling its waters but it is the activities of EU-subsidised and other foreign fleets that have been criticised by conservation groups for accelerating the decline of fish stocks in the region.

The trawlers chase chubb, snappers, mackerel and the highly prized tuna, among others.

The Science study notes that the European Union maintains the largest foreign presence off the coast of West Africa, with EU fish catches increasing 20-fold from 1950 to 2001, and financial subsidies jumping from $6m in 1981 to more than $350m in 2001.

The big prize off west Africa is tuna
“Other studies have shown that EU subsidies artificially increase the profitability for EU ships to fish in African waters,” said Dr Brashares.

“If it weren’t for this financial support, these studies suggest, it wouldn’t be worthwhile for EU fleets to head to west Africa.”

Some campaigners have accused foreign interests of pressuring African governments into issuing generous fishing licences by tying negotiations to loans and aid packages

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