Aimuamwosa Miracle EWERE

Millions of tropical forest inhabitants rely on wild meat (or bushmeat) as an essential source of protein and income, which in turn result to unsustainable harvest of these animals, thus putting both human food security and ecosystem
functioning at risk. This study was carried out to analyse the demand for bushmeat in Edo-south agro-ecological zone, Edo state, Nigeria; with specific objectives to ascertain the socio- economic characteristics of bushmeat consumers in the study area, the level and frequency of their demand for bushmeat, identify factors influencing household demand for bushmeat, determine the effect of these factors on household demand for bushmeat, estimate the price and income elasticity of demand, estimate the household expenditure for bushmeat in the
study area, as well as identifying the closest substitute for bushmeat in the study area. A two-stage sampling procedure was used to obtain 88 respondents (bushmeat consumers) for the study. Data was collected through the use of well-structured questionnaire and interview schedule, and analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, mean and standard deviation, and inferential statistics such multiple regession. The result revealed that 86.36% of the respondents were male, 62.50% were married with mean age of 36 years. Larger percentage (59.09%) had tertiary education and had small family size of 1-5 members (90.91%). Also, Majority of the respondents (75%) do business with mean monthly income of ₦262267, and mean monthly household income of ₦349733. Most of the respondent consumes bushmeat week in, week out (55.68%), preferred it smoked (93.18%) and consume it majorly because of its unique taste (79.55%). The the major factors influencing household demand for bushmeat were taste (94.3%) which was significant at 5% with a positive coefficient (312.56), price of bush meat (79.6%), 10 11
income of consumer (77.3%) which was significant at 1% with a positive coefficient (4049.60) and availability of bush meat (76.1%), was significant at 10% with a positive coefficient (1398.60). The positive coefficient of the factors indicated that increase in those factors will lead to increase in the demand for bushmeat. 65% of the variation in the demand for bush meat was explained by the factors in the regression model (R2 = 0.65, F-value = 4.64). The result also
showed bushmeat was inelastic to its price (-0.44), but tending to elastic for income elasticity (0.58), which was significant at 1%. The mean result showed that the respondents spends ₦71795.45 on food items monthly, accounting 20.5% of the household mean monthly income (₦349733), and having mean household budget share of bushmeat as 0.27. Chicken was the closest substitute to bushmeat with a cumulative preference frequency of 44.45% (very high-23.86%, high- 20.45%), in the study area, followed by frozen fish (44.32%). There is urgent need for wild species domestication in the study area to meet the increasing market demand for bushmeat, as well as development and enforcement of policy interventions geared towards sustainable harvest of wild animals.