Unreported World

The Monkey Business (2012x6)

Air date: May 25, 2012

In Cameroon there are fears that the practice of eating bushmeat - wild meat hunted in the rainforest, including endangered gorillas and chimpanzees - could trigger a new global pandemic of viruses. Unreported World investigates. Reporter Evan Williams and director James Brabazon also meet the British woman battling the trade and looking after the animals orphaned by the slaughter. Eighty percent of all meat eaten in Cameroon is bushmeat. To understand how the trade works, the team travels to the Dja Reserve in the south east of the country, where the tracks and clearings created by logging companies have opened up the once-impenetrable jungle to bushmeat poachers. Williams meets some of the wardens trying to combat the poachers. There are only 60 wardens to cover the 2000 square miles of the Dja Reserve. Until 2009 they were funded by the EU. Now they're on their own and it's dangerous work. One warden has already been killed by poachers this year and many have been injured. Williams and Brabazon walk into the forest with the wardens and meet a group of indigenous Baka people, the so-called pygmies. They tell Williams that people come four or five times a week looking for all sorts of bushmeat and hire locals to go and hunt for them. One warden tells Williams that the local hunters get around 25 to 30 Euros for a chimpanzee. But the Baka have something even more shocking to reveal. Eating gorilla meat has wiped out one of their neighbouring villages: 25 men, women and children died. There was only one person who survived, and that person didn't eat the meat. The team heads back to the capital, Yaounde, to meet Professor Dominique Baudon at the Pasteur Centre. He's on the frontline of protecting both Cameroon and the world from the threat of new viruses emerging from man's contact with apes and in particular the preparation and consumption of bushmeat. He tells Williams he believes within the next 20 years new viruses, possibly similar to