The African Bushmeat Expedition is an innovative approach to conservation education with an underlying objective of curbing illegal wildlife trade in Africa. The educational goals of the program are focused on teaching students in the U.S. and East Africa advanced skills in molecular biology and conservation science, while assisting in the study, awareness and prevention of the African bushmeat trade. Although illegal wildlife poaching occurs worldwide, the impact in Africa has been devastating. The commercial hunting of wildlife in Africa is the primary cause for the loss of biodiversity in Africa. Additionally, the bushmeat trade has led to the spread of some of the deadliest pathogens including HIV, Ebola, and monkeypox. Thus, any reduction in the bushmeat crisis may help preserve biodiversity and lessen the spread of zoonotic diseases. The High Tech High based organization consists of students who are current or former biotechnology students of Dr. Jay Vavra, and who share a passion for wildlife conservation. With the support of collaborators such as Dr. Oliver Ryder and his colleagues of the Zoological Society of San Diego and the life science company Invitrogen, several goals have already been achieved within this program. Participants are also members of Roots & Shoots and are greatly inspired by the life, friendship, and work of Dr. Jane Goodall. Past and present activities have resulted in the development and testing of methods for analyzing tissue samples from simulated bushmeat using ostrich, turkey and beef jerky. 

In the summer of 2008 Dr. Vavra and nine students traveled to Tanzania to collaborate with Tanzanian wildlife officials and post-graduate students from Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and Uganda at Mweka College to develop methods to assist in species identification to combat the bushmeat trade. The trip was a great success in regard to a life changing educational experience for the participants, an informed public by those that followed the blog (africanbushmeat.org) kept running during the trip, and by the resulting documentary produced from the 35 hours of video and photographs shot during the trip, and, ultimately, by the lives of African wildlife that will be saved resulting from this program. The resulting documentary "Students of Consequence" won the best overall youth video award at the 2008 annual meeting of the National Conference for Science and the Environment. The film will be showing at the 2009 Environmental Film Festival in Washington D.C. and the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of AAAS in San Francisco. The group will return to Tanzania in the summer of 2009 to conduct a conservation forensics workshop for wildlife officials.

Partner Statement

The conservation of wild species of animals is at the heart of WWF's work. One of the major threats to species conservation is the killing of wild animals for bushmeat intended for subsistence use and illegal trade. WWF's biodiversity conservation approaches rely on good science. The scientific method proposed in this project will certainly contribute a great deal in addressing the bushmeat problem not only in Africa, but in other parts of the world where this is an issue.