Crimes Against Earth Bushmeat: A Global Problem Animals from primates to snakes are valuable commodities in the thriving, albeit illegal, worldwide trade of bushmeat, defined as wildlife killed either by commercial or subsistence hunters. With one million tons of bushmeat taken from African forests every year, the already endangered gorilla population—a primary victim of the trade—is in dire straits. This photo shows a gorilla family in southeast Cameroon (minus the alpha male silverback, who managed to get away) that had bee slaughtered in their nests by a bushmeat hunter early one morning.