The Illegal Bushmeat Trade in Zambia: Evaluating A Behaviour Change Campaign Sarah Davies, Luwi Nguluka, Mirriam Nasilele, Wisdom Muzoka, Maina Malaya, Natasha Kabanda, Vincent Nyirenda, Peter Lindsey
The illegal bushmeat trade is the greatest threat to wildlife populations in Zambia. The demand for bushmeat in urban markets drives an increasingly commercial and organised illegal trade. It has been estimated that 1,140 tons of bushmeat are consumed in Zambia’s capital city, Lusaka each year, and further that the demand is 50 times this number. Zambia’s bushmeat trade is a lucrative but destructive and unsustainable industry that not only affects ungulate populations but all wildlife. Many poachers use snares, silent and indiscriminate killers which result in significant bycatch. A collapse in ungulate populations hunted for bushmeat results in the collapse of other flagship populations, particularly carnivores.
THE CAMPAIGN In 2017 WCP and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) launched Zambia’s first behaviour change campaign targeting the illegal bushmeat trade. “This Is Not a Game” leverages a growing social media movement as well as traditional TV and radio channels for distribution. The campaign targets illegal bushmeat consumers in urban areas, as the biggest consumers and drivers of the trade. The campaign aims to shift social norms by nudging consumer demand away from illegal bushmeat through behavioural science towards legal game meat. A diverse suite of methods has been used to reach audiences including edutainment storylines in popular Zambian TV soap operas. To date, the campaign has reached millions of Zambians via social media, television, and radio: “It’s illegal, it’s dangerous, it carries diseases”.
THIS REPORT This paper highlights the results from an evaluation of the first three years of the campaign. The study used both quantitative and qualitative data collection through individual surveys and focus group discussions. 401 phone call surveys were conducted in English, Bemba and Nyanja by four Zambian enumerators. The surveys were designed to determine the current knowledge, attitudes and practices of the potential consumer market of illegal bushmeat in Zambia, whether they had been exposed to the This Is Not A Game campaign material or not. Respondents were identified using the snowball sampling method. 52 people participated in eight focus group discussions held in Lusaka, Kitwe, Livingstone and Solwezi. The discussions were conducted in a socially distanced format over a six-week period in 2021. Lastly, 140 respondents took an online survey created on Survey Monkey. The survey was distributed via the This Is Not A Game campaign’s social media pages (Facebook and Instagram).
Report Highlights Illegal Bushmeat Consumption Habits in Zambia Meat from wildlife continues to be an extremely popular source of protein in Zambia. Almost all respondents (93 %) identified as consumers of bushmeat (legal and illegal meat from wildlife) and 59 % of these individuals had consumed meat from wildlife in the last 12 months. Almost all respondents (97 %) said that they would prefer to eat licensed meat from wildlife. Driven by wanting to avoid the legal penalties of bushmeat consumption and possession; the belief that legal game meat is safer for one’s health; and certainty about what one is eating. 68 % of people who ate bushmeat, preferred dry bushmeat. The majority of illegal bushmeat available in Zambia is prepared dry (either air or smoke-dried) Conversely, legal game meat is mostly sold in fresh cuts. 46% of respondents said they had not seen or heard messaging about the dangers of illegal bushmeat. Those who had seen these messages saw them on TV and social media and heard them on radio and other forms of media.
In order to better understand the response to the This Is Not A Game behaviour change campaign an online survey was circulated on the campaign's social media sites and the following responses were received: 95 % of survey respondents had heard or seen messages about the dangers of eating or buying illegal bushmeat and 72 % recognized images associated with the campaign specifically (as expected as the respondents were sourced through campaign social media sites). The majority (60 %) of respondents reported that their opinion about illegal bushmeat had changed in the past 3 years. 78 % of these people reported that this change was because of information they had learned through the campaign. As was expected, given that the targeted audience was people who had seen the campaign, a large proportion of them (69 %) said that they had not eaten bushmeat in the past year. The rest had eaten it between once and monthly in the past year. Most people asked (97 %), thought that there were disadvantages associated with eating illegal bushmeat.
Conclusion Our study showed that for those who were exposed to campaign materials, the messages resonated, and behaviour and attitudes were shifted. However, in our target audience of urban consumers, the campaign has not yet reached a large enough number of people to significantly disrupt social norms. To combat the increasing threat of the illegal bushmeat trade, it is important that the behaviour change campaign reaches a larger portion of the consumer market with its impactful, relevant messaging, focusing on issues which have been shown to resonate with the target demographic, through proven channels. Furthermore, there are opportunities for the legal game meat industry to profit from this huge demand for meat from wildlife, through marketing themselves better to consumers and particularly by providing dry legal game meat alternatives to match the illegal product that is currently available.