Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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KANYANG, Nigeria — Former bushmeat hunter Jacob Osang says poverty and lack of options drove him to the trade. “There were no jobs, no opportunity anywhere,” Osang says.
In 1985, after failing to find a job in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, Osang, then in his early 20s, returned to his village in southeastern Cross River state. Almost immediately, he took to hunting bushmeat, which he sold to local restaurants.
Hunters like Osang knew there were gorillas deep in the remote forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border — though Osang says he never hunted them himself — but at the time conservationists believed the last of the Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli) subspecies had died in the wake of the 1960s civil war in Nigeria.
Eventually, accounts that Cross River gorillas still existed in the mountains around Osang’s village began to filter out to the outside world. The rumors prompted the Lagos-based Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) to send gorilla experts Alexander Harcourt and Kelly Stewart and researcher Ibrahim Inahoro to conduct a population survey.
Osang was recruited alongside another hunter, Napoleon Mkpe, to help them. At the time, he says, he had no particular interest in conservation. He was just happy for a break from hunting, which he describes as “very difficult work” for “small money.”
In Nigeria, hunters turn into guardians of the rarest gorilla on Earth
That's actually pretty cool!
In 1985, after failing to find a job in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, Osang, then in his early 20s, returned to his village in southeastern Cross River state. Almost immediately, he took to hunting bushmeat, which he sold to local restaurants.
Hunters like Osang knew there were gorillas deep in the remote forests along the Nigeria-Cameroon border — though Osang says he never hunted them himself — but at the time conservationists believed the last of the Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli) subspecies had died in the wake of the 1960s civil war in Nigeria.
Eventually, accounts that Cross River gorillas still existed in the mountains around Osang’s village began to filter out to the outside world. The rumors prompted the Lagos-based Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) to send gorilla experts Alexander Harcourt and Kelly Stewart and researcher Ibrahim Inahoro to conduct a population survey.
Osang was recruited alongside another hunter, Napoleon Mkpe, to help them. At the time, he says, he had no particular interest in conservation. He was just happy for a break from hunting, which he describes as “very difficult work” for “small money.”
In Nigeria, hunters turn into guardians of the rarest gorilla on Earth
That's actually pretty cool!
