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In West and central Africa, the bushmeat trade is a major societal issue with contrasting implications on biodiversity, health and economy. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, bushmeat trade markets were hit by national bans of various amplitude and poorly apprehended socio-economic consequences. We studied perceptions on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related governmental measures on the bushmeat trade dynamics through questionnaires addressed to 377 vendors across three West and central African countries. We showed that bushmeat vendors constitute a professional category engaged in profitable, long-term careers. Vendors generally agreed that the pandemic had a negative impact on their activities and the number of clients. However, we observed large discrepancies among national trade dynamics. Côte d'Ivoire was hardly hit by the bushmeat ban and perceived governmental measures as rather negative, whereas Cameroon generally did not report a temporary stop of bushmeat activities and engaged in the stockpiling of pangolin meat (the most trafficked wild mammals in the world), and Benin suffered from a weakened supply chain. Because such differences are rooted in the geography and political agenda of each country, predicting the impact of mitigation measures on the global dynamics of bushmeat markets might be an unrealistic task if national specificities are not considered. West and central African vendors generally did not believe that pangolins were involved in the pandemic, for the reason that people have always been eating pangolins and have never been sick. Given that genomic mechanisms can quickly turn a harmless viral strain into an emerging infectious disease, we recommend that future awareness campaigns through television and social networks –the main media consulted by vendors– also include education on microbial evolution and host shift. • Bushmeat vendors from West and central Africa constitute a professional category engaged in profitable, long-term careers. • Vendors globally reported that the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted and keeps impacting the bushmeat trade profitability. • We observed discrepancies in the trade dynamics among West and central African countries due to different political agendas. • Such discrepancies might rend unrealistic global predictions on the dynamics of the wildlife trade under mitigation policy. • Mitigation policies should integrate sensitization to microbial evolution and host shift in their awareness campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: African pangolins are currently experiencing unprecedented levels of harvesting, feeding both local demands and the illegal international trade. So far, the lack of knowledge on the population genetics of African pangolins has hampered any attempts at assessing their demographic status and tracing their trade at the local scale. We conducted a pioneer study on the genetic tracing of the African pangolin trade in the Dahomey Gap (DG). We sequenced and genotyped 189 white-bellied pangolins from 18 forests and 12 wildlife markets using one mitochondrial fragment and 20 microsatellite loci., Results: Tree-based assignment procedure showed that the pangolin trade is endemic to the DG region, as it was strictly fed by the the Dahomey Gap lineage (DGL). DGL populations were characterized by low levels of genetic diversity, an overall absence of equilibrium, important inbreeding levels, and lack of geographic structure. We identified a 92-98% decline in DGL effective population size 200-500 ya-concomitant with major political transformations along the 'Slave Coast'-leading to contemporaneous estimates being inferior to minimum viable population size (< 500). Genetic tracing suggested that wildlife markets from the DG sourced pangolins through the entire DGL range. Our loci provided the necessary power to distinguish among all the genotyped pangolins, tracing the dispatch of a same individual on the markets and within local communities. We developed an approach combining rarefaction analysis of private allele frequencies with cross-validation of observed data that traced five traded pangolins to their forest origin, c. 200-300 km away from the markets., Conclusions: Although the genetic toolkit that we designed from traditional markers can prove helpful to trace the illegal trade in pangolins, our tracing ability was limited by the lack of population structure within the DGL. Given the deleterious combination of genetic, demographic, and trade-related factors affecting DGL populations, the conservation status of white-bellied pangolins in the DG should be urgently re-evaluated., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Background: Pangolins are trafficked in unsustainable volumes to feed both local and global trade networks for their meat and the medicinal properties of their derivatives, including scales. We focus on a West African country (Benin) to assess the medicinal and spiritual values of pangolins among different ethnic groups and identify the cohort of buyers involved in the pangolin trade and related economic values along the chain, notably from local diasporas., Methods: We organised 54 focus groups in villages surrounding occurrence habitats of pangolins across Benin and conducted 35 individual interviews with vendors from five major traditional medicine markets (TMMs). Our questionnaire addressed the different uses of pangolins, the commercial value of pangolin items, the categories of clients and the related selling prices., Results: Pangolin meat was strictly consumed as food. Scales, head, bones, tongue, blood, heart and xiphisternum were the items used by local communities as part of medicinal (65% of the focus groups) and spiritual (37%) practices. Scales were the most frequently used item (use value index = 1.56). A total of 42 medicinal and spiritual uses, covering 15 International Classification of Diseases (ICD) categories, were recorded among ethnic groups. The ICD and spiritual categories-based analyses of similarity showed a partial overlapping of ethnozoological knowledge across Benin, although knowledge was significantly influenced by ethnicity and geographic location. The pricing of pangolins both varied with the category of stakeholders (local communities vs. stakeholders of TMMs) and clients (local and West African clients vs. Chinese community) and the type of items sold. The Chinese community was reported to only buy pangolins alive, and average selling prices were 3-8 times higher than those to West African clients., Conclusions: Our results confirm that pangolins in Africa are valuable and versatile resources for consumption and medicinal / spiritual practices. The pangolin trade in Benin is based on an endogenous and complex network of actors that now appears influenced by the specific, high-valued demand from the Chinese diaspora. Further investigations are required to assess the growing impact of the Chinese demand on the African wildlife trade.