 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to all the people that are connected. I see your name going down on the list of attendees and a few names that are recognized. We are going to try in 30 minutes to give you a sort of a broad overview of the whole issue of wild meat and the use of wild meat. This has been triggered by the unfortunate event that we are all living now, which is this COVID-19 pandemic, which has now affected more than 2 million people in more than 180 countries. And that very likely originates from a virus jumping from an animal to another animal for humans, and then humans contaminating themselves. So it's a zoonotic disease, and these zoonotic diseases are not very new, but this one brings them back to the forefront and also the importance of the issue of wild meat. There have been a lot of people, I would say, uploading the fact that China decided to close the wet market. But fundamentally the problem is that a lot of people depend on wild meat for their everyday source of protein or fat or resources. And the situation is not that simple and a complete ban is never a very good answer. So we are going to see how we can address and explain this challenge and can we find some middle ground on this complex reality. Now we'll ask my panelists to introduce briefly themselves to tell us what they do exactly in the world of wild meat and starting with ladies, Alta Betty Porter, Lauren, Natalie, and John in last. Hi, my name is Lauren Code. I'm a research fellow with C4 and also with the University of Oxford, and I work at the Bush Meat Research Initiative at C4. My experience with wild meat is that I did my PhD in Gabon, and I lived in Gabon for a few years studying local hunting practices in villages in central Gabon. And then I lived in Cambodia for a while where I did some small scale studies on wildlife use in the Cardamom Mountains. And since then I've been working on a number of wild meat projects that focus on sustainable wildlife management with C4 and Oxford. Hi, I'm Natalie von Blips. So I have been working on wildlife and wild meat issues for the last 20 years. Basically my experience is more in Central Africa and more recently in the Amazon. And I would say that even more recently I've been lucky enough to discover about wild meat use in the Caribbean, which I think is a very much understudied region in terms of wild meat use. It has been very interesting. So my focus is really on the links between wildlife and livelihoods, understanding the importance of wildlife for the people that use it, either for food or to protect their crops. There are many reasons why people use wild meat. And yes, I guess my research and my colleagues' research is really to help policy makers develop policies that are well informed in terms of how to sustainably use wild meat. On the other hand, I'm very interested in the rights and the culture of people that have been using wild meat for centuries that continue to use it sustainably or not, but to have their voices heard at the policy making level. Hello, my name is John Farr. I basically am an animal ecologist and my profession, my PhD was on those sorts of issues. I've been working on management of endangered species for quite a number of years, but also the whole issue of how wildlife is used by people in different parts of the world. I have been working on the issue of wild meat now for about 30 years. My first experience was in Ecuador, Guinea, and we have continued working in Africa and South America, and recently we started doing some work in Asia as well. My interest is very much to understand that middle ground between the ecology of wild species in natural habitats and what people need from these animals and from these habitats and really come up with ways in which we can balance the needs of wildlife and the needs of people. Thanks, John. So maybe, John, you can start by telling us what is wild meat actually and how does it fit into the wildlife use more globally and for the local people and other communities. The actual definition is very simple, that we're dealing with the flesh of wild animals that are being consumed by people throughout the world. I would venture to say that wild meat is even the rabbits that we catch in the Europe or the patridors and everything else, as well as the infinite number of animals that are consumed throughout the world. An estimate of that goes to about 2,000 different species, different parts, different regions of different animals, but essentially anything from snails to elephants are being consumed as wild meat in different parts of the world. The definition of wild meat is the one that we're currently using. We try to keep the term bush meat more to the African situation. The Latin Americans, for example, have a particular view that the term bush meat should be applied early to Africa, whereas in the context of Latin America, it's more game or wild meat. So these are semantics to some extent, because essentially we're dealing with wild animal flesh that's being consumed by people. Thanks, John. And maybe, Lauren, you can continue in saying, for example, what is happening with the case in China now? Yes, I think one of the important things to note that I think John's brought up is that wild meat is used all around the world. And it's used by local communities as an important source of protein and nutrition, but it's also used in urban areas, in small regional towns, but also in large urban areas. And in China, there are these wet markets that we're hearing a lot about. Often, when we've been hearing about wet markets in the news, it's been focused on the wildlife trade, but wet markets actually include a range of different species, domestic, livestock, fish, wildlife, and also plants. And it's one of the main ways that urban Chinese get there by their fresh produce. But that's not just limited to China. We see wet markets all around the world, whether it's in Central Africa or South America, or whether it's in Cambridge going to the local fishmongers. So this is, wildlife fuses is very much global. I think the importance of wildlife for people changes depending on the situation. So we have local communities, very rural local communities in places like Gabon and Central Africa, where people are very much dependent on wild meat for their livelihoods and for their nutrition. So people in regional areas, in regional towns in Central Africa are also very dependent on wildlife for their nutrition. And this is brought through wet markets. Thank you. Maybe you can continue Lauren and telling us what is the connection between this consumption of wildlife and the emergence of infectious or zoonotic diseases. So emergence of zoonotic diseases, obviously, is incredibly important. And more than 60% of infectious diseases originate from animals. And of those about 70% come from wildlife. The question is how the infectious diseases transmit from the wildlife to humans. And that's where it becomes a bit more complex than just talking about wildlife trade. So more than 50% of outbreaks of zoonotic diseases since the 1940s have been linked to agricultural intensification. So we don't just have an issue with direct consumption of wildlife spreading zoonotic diseases. It's also that we have increased land use by humans. We have increased livestock production, increased agricultural intensification, and all those things are bringing wildlife into a much closer contact with humans and spreading those zoonotic diseases. So we really have to think about how human activity is spreading the disease transmission. John, can you tell us a bit of the work that we have done in terms of this issue of degradation and zoonotic diseases? As Lauren says, I mean, there are many different ways in which human beings can come into contact with wildlife. Certainly through the consumption of wild meat is one way of doing that. What we have tried to do through C4 and our partners, we have tried to look at the problem in different scales, at different scales. We've done, the team in C4 has done a lot of work on the ground working with different communities, monitoring what is being consumed, how much has been taken out, and what is the relationship between the people and the wildlife itself. We have taken it one step further with our work using models to try to understand the possible spread of disease in Africa primarily, and what we have other work going on to look at the possible contact between humans and wildlife and disease in other parts of the world. So our work with the University of Malaga in Spain has been primarily to look at ways in which we could distinguish which sorts of animals could potentially be the reservoir species or the transmitters of the disease such a disease such as Ebola. Ebola is actually sort of transmitted by a phylovirus, it's another type of virus, very similar in many ways to a coronavirus. And our work has actually shown where it is more likely to contract that virus or where the virus is in more favorable conditions and that's very important for us to understand. But we've also looked at ways in which the altering of the environment in which the virus is in does affect the possibility of transmission. And that's our work on deforestation, for example, I've shown quite dramatically that deforestation occurs two years before an outbreak is a very good correlate of what is going to happen in the future. In other words, when you disrupt trees, when you disrupt forests, when you upset the balance of viruses and pathogens and animals and people, then that's when you're most likely to get outbreaks such as Ebola. We've looked at the 27 different outbreaks that have occurred, and we've looked at the relationship of deforestation by actually doing very extensive satellite imagery and looking at what's happening in these areas. So, you know, the point that comes out from all the work we've done is that it is not just, it is not good to blame, to point a finger at a particular species or an interaction between species of wild meat and people. It has to do with the root causes of all this, which really has more to do with how we disrupt nature, how we do away with the balance of nature, how we do away with forest and how that creates new conditions for viruses and pathogens. So, we have a jump from an animal to a human and then after people contaminate people. So then there has been some very blunt answer in terms of should we have a global ban on wildlife trade, radiocesing zoonotic diseases, and what will be the impact of such a ban on wildlife threats and wildlife use. Natalie, you can start and your view about that. Yes, so on one hand, on one hand, many countries have already banned wild meat trade in many countries is already forbidden to trade wild meat. It's often even forbidden to hunt because the legislations are done in a way that if you look at the legislations closely, you will see that most of the hunting is actually happening illegally. So I don't really think that the ban right now would change things unless suddenly we have enormous capacities from those countries to actually enforce current regulations. I mean, in the face of these emergencies, countries have put a lot of money in enforcing regulations that we would have never thought would happen, like keeping people at home for so many days, which, you know, it could be that countries decide like China to actually really enforce those bands in the future. In that case, in that case, I think the ban could be, I mean, we have to look at it in different ways. I think, of course, for people that really rely on wild meat, which are mostly rural people, most of them indigenous people that have kept the knowledge and the skills for hunting, and that continue to rely on hunting as a main source of food or as a very important safety net. Those would be the people that are most affected if hunting or wild meat trade is banned and if the ban is enforced. Now people living in medium-sized towns, we have different situations. We have middle-sized towns where wild meat is still very important, particularly for the poor, because it's still a cheap source of animal protein. And there's not a lot of other alternatives. That's the case, for example, Kisangani five years ago was in that situation where you had this city was coming out from conflict, was in a post-conflict situation, there was still very little access to domestic sources of meat. And so wild meat and other non-timber forest products were the cheapest way to acquire proteins for people even in that urban area. So we also have other medium-sized towns where domestic sources of meat are very much available. If you take the example of Leticia in the Amazon or let them in Guyana where I'm working now, you know, you have plenty of other sources of alternative proteins. You have beef, you have chicken and eggs, you have industrialized meat. So wild meat is not really a necessity. So banning the trade would affect a very limited number of stakeholders for which I don't think it's too difficult to find alternatives and to help convert themselves into other livelihood activities. In my opinion, it's not really the ban that will change how people view wild meat. It's more people's perceptions, fears that will actually affect attitudes and behaviors towards wild meat. Whether it is a ban or not, these pandemic has really created fear on people in different ways. I think for a lot of urban people that we're consuming or are consuming wild meat at the moment, since they have a choice, they might think it twice. We already see this trend in Kisangani where urban people are starting to respond and saying, now that we are aware that Ebola comes from wild meat, we don't want to eat wild meat so much anymore. Which is not the case for rural people who say, Ebola or not, I have always been eating wild meat and I continue to do so because I don't have any choice. On the other hand, I think that rural people are more and more conscious due to what's happening now at the moment that their livelihoods has become too dependent from the outside world, from the markets, from chicken coming from the neighboring countries, from Brazil, industrialized food coming from everywhere in the world, and their food security is at risk when suddenly you have to close boundaries, you have to close villages, entire communities. In Guyana, for example, entire communities that are closing are locking themselves down. So the only source of meat now is fish and wild meat again. So I think people are starting to think we need to be clever enough to maintain those skills and knowledge about wildlife, about how to use wildlife sustainably because that's the only food source that we might have in case of crisis. So I think one of the interesting things that we will have to look at in the future is actually how people have changed their behavior in the face of these pandemics, which has I think surprised everyone in the world, whether you are from urban areas, whether you come from the tropics or from temperate regions. I think this has changed a little bit the thinking in terms of how do I ensure my food security in the future, in case of crisis. Thank you. Now we have a sort of a view of the local people and the views of the wild meat, but what will be the impact on the conservation of biodiversity in terms of this various policy implemented or not implemented? I think there's, first of all, there's a really good blog on this. There's a piece on this in the conversation. It's written by Dan Chalander that I urge people to go and read. But the starting point that Natalie made, many countries have already got trade bans in place and those trade bans aren't really working for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that there's very little enforcement of the trade bans. And another reason being that the laws surrounding hunting are quite difficult to enforce. They can be quite opaque and a lot of them need to be re-evaluated. But further than that, I think that we haven't got that much evidence that trade bans rework that well. So there's, there was a small study on a trade ban that was enforced in Ecuador, Guinea, in the Malibu markets in 2007. And while they found that when wildlife was, trade was banned in Malibu, there was an initial decrease. Quite quickly afterwards, the trade rebounded and actually hit higher levels than before the ban because of the lack of enforcement. The other issue is that if you do ban trade and if you are effective in banning that trade, then what it can do is it can push the trade underground into illegal markets. And that can, in some circumstances, increase the amount of trade that's organised by criminal gangs. And if you do that, then regulating that trade is very difficult. So if you have a more regulated legalised trade, then you're able to enforce more put in place standards for hygiene and for welfare. Whereas if it's completely made illegal, then that can be really difficult to do. So I think we have to think of a balance of regulation and enforcement for some species. I'll pass that on to John now, what he thinks. It's certainly true. I mean, I know the example of the Biyoko because the trade was, the trade of primers actually, mostly monkeys, was actually stopped. And then immediately afterwards, because there was no enforcement, the whole thing went back to normal or even worse than normal. People do react, as Natalie said, and people will react and not purchase meat after Ebola, for example, in Africa. The studies that have been done in Nigeria and Liberia show that people will not eat that. And there is that fear element that comes in, but it's because people themselves are making a decision not to eat the meat. It's not because, you know, the authorities are telling them not to consume. So it is rather complex and it's very complex, even more complex. The further down the line you go, I mean, enforcing that in rural areas, how on earth are you going to do it with rural people, the indigenous people? Why should you be doing that when these are people that rely 100% from the meat that comes out of the forest? And there's a point that I'd like to make, actually, because we tend to think that these viruses are forever through killing anything and anyone that comes into contact with them. Let's also remember that indigenous people and people living in forests have been exposed to these viruses and pathogens for many, many, many, many years. And there's plenty of studies out there that actually show already that there are clinical expressions, immunological expressions within these communities of exposure to viruses. That could be very, very important for us to understand as a means of coming up with new ways of dealing with viruses or pathogens. So my general point is that we have got to take into account everything. Again, my constant reminder that we have got to look at the bigger picture. We can't just deal with things on a one-to-one basis without really understanding the interactions and the networks and the knowledge we can obtain from doing this properly. And for us as researchers, and I think it's fundamentally important that we understand this more global, more macro way of looking at things so that we can come up with possible solutions to the problem. And that's what our team has been doing for all this time. Before going back to Lauren and Natali with the issue of changing, one thing that we need to remind people is that a large amount of the zoonotic disease didn't come from wild meat. They came from domestic animals. And if you ban wild meat, wildlife on the wet market, but if you let the chicken, the pigs and other whales, you are still going to face a problem of potential huge pandemics. It's something that has been a little bit underscored in the current crisis. Although now people seem to think that the coronavirus, the current one, could have jumped from bats to stray dogs near this market and not via pangolin. Not proof, but still. Natali, do you think that if a new one pandemics appear again, the wild meat consumption will be different or people will forget? No, I think I do think that there will be a long term impact in terms of consumption behavior. I think we really need to measure this after COVID because I think COVID is the first pandemic that has had impacts all over the world, in temperate regions, in tropical world. So Ebola was far away in Africa for many people in the world, Ebola was only in Africa, so it was still far away. I think now these pandemics come closer to people, I think they will have a change in terms of how people view wild meat consumption. Yeah, what I wanted to say as a follow up to what Lauren was saying is that if we, where wild meat is an informal market, it never benefits from the support that other formal market chains have to control food safety measures, to increase the quality, to access microcredit to be able to have access to a nice refrigerator or a clean tools to work and to butcher your meat. If you look at bush meat markets and wild meat markets in most of the places, bush meat is being sold at the back of the market where you're not too visible, but you don't have access to clean water. You don't have access to a lot of things that actually would support and would help traders to reduce their risk in terms of, you know, becoming the spillover that could happen when they're cutting and butchering the meat. And also, so because I think it's important also to remind that the spillover doesn't happen where people when people consume white meat. And that's sometimes it's difficult to make the difference right because people think it's the consumption of white meat which is a problem it's not really the consumption is actually the trade and the handling of white meat, which exposes people to zoonotic diseases that could spill over to humans. So, if white meat trade could benefit from the same support that formal trade chains have in terms of improving food safety and so on, I think we could, we could perhaps reduce their risk and the contacts, the risk of spillovers between white like the direct ones right spillover from wildlife to humans, because as Robert said, even though in our minds we have these numbers that 70% of the zoonotic diseases come from wildlife. It's important to understand that most of those actually use domestic animals as as vectors. So they don't directly spillover from wildlife to humans. In many cases, they actually use domestic animals as an as you know, as a as a vector between wildlife and humans. It's the case of NEPA virus, for example, that jump from bats to pigs, and then from pigs to humans. Right. So, I think those are a number of things that we need to remind ourselves when we think of simplifying the problem and oversimplifying a potential wrong solution. Exactly. When you have a hammer, everybody looks like a name. Yeah. Lauren, you wanted to add something. Yeah, I think just adding to Natalie's thoughts there that this is, this is definitely a global problem. It's not a problem for Central Africa or South America or people who eat, eat wild meat in rural areas, it's a, it's a problem for all of us. We have very globalised food systems, and we have a rapidly increasing global population. And this is an issue of how to feed that population sustainably and in a way that isn't going to keep on having huge impacts on our natural world. The reason why we're getting this increase in zoonotic diseases isn't just butchering of wildlife in places in the global south. It's our production of, it's our intensification of agriculture for products like soy and palm oil. It's the deforestation rates. It's our increasing need for more livestock. And so I think hopefully this can be seen as a time when we all think about the way that we consume and think about how we can change those consumption patterns as a global community to make sure that we're not having such drastic impacts on nature. That's a big question. We will learn the lesson we will see after this. We have been talking for more than 30 minutes. Now I have a few questions typed by the floor and I will write a few and then read a few and then he wants to answer. So let's say by the first one, which is about the nutritional advantage of food products for free range livestock, swine and poultry have been highlighted. Shouldn't the nutritional dimension also be incorporated in the wildlife discourse, not only the zoonotic risk? Joan, you want to talk about the nutrition? Yes, there are nutritional advantages of free range livestock and all that, but the end of the day it has to do with what is the potential to produce sufficient amounts to cover the needs of millions of people. It's all very good to have free range chickens, etc., but is it accessible for the poor and all that? Often these sorts of things in our countries, for example, these sorts of products are very much a middle class type of commodity rather than that. So we've got to look at ways and I mean, following on from what Lauren is saying, part of the problem that we have nowadays is that the need for more and more food to be accessible to more and more people has actually pushed us into this corner where we have to industrialize the way that we produce animals on plants and all that. So I think we have to look at, perhaps slow food is more of a solution than we thought it was, and we certainly have got to do away with practices that just produces animals or plants in an unregulated manner. So there are advantages of these free ranging animals there, but let's not kid ourselves. This is not for everyone. We have to look at ways in which we can produce sufficient food for the masses without going into the situation that we're in at the moment. Difficult question. Yeah. I have a question from South Africa. Is it safe to say the illegal trade is happening in most countries because the government often fails to follow a participatory approach before making ban regulations that affect people's livelihoods? Natalie. Yes, I do think that most of the regulations have been inherited. I mean, at least for the countries that were colonized in the past, which is the case for the whole Latin America, the whole Africa, and also parts of Asia. The regulations were inherited from the colonial times, and they have changed a little bit, but changed in a very chaotic way. So we end up with regulations that are unclear, that are full of gaps, that do not represent people's realities, and where people have never been involved in the discussion in terms of how do those regulations represent the reality, which is what regulations should do, right? They should represent the society, and they should represent what the society thinks is right or wrong, right? And I think this is where participatory process are very important. I think I could congratulate the efforts that Guyana as a country is doing at the moment, trying to develop new regulations for wildlife trade and wildlife use, involving the different regions, trying to reach out to the different regions and different community groups. So, I think this is where we should be, I think, trying to go in terms of understanding the different stakeholders' views, those that are the primary producers of white meat, the hunters and their families, and then the rest of the stakeholders that are involved. So how do we involve the traders? What is the vision they have? How do they think they are concerned, if you talk to them, they are concerned about sustainability because it's their business. So they could be engaged in a constructive manner to co-develop those regulations in a way that is more consistent, representative of realities, and more adapted to the different contexts. I have a question that is a bit of a follow-up on that, and looking at the scientific evidence on the relationship between ecosystem degradation and zoonotic transfer, is this current pandemic not a reminder of the importance of regulating and reducing the expected industry, which is opening up forests, dialoguing roads, rather than yet again trying to criminalize indigenous and oral people? Who wants to say something about that? Since I know Simon, maybe I can answer that question now. There is evidence, I'm growing evidence that as you disrupt ecosystems and certainly tropical rainforests, then you're going to have the outbreaks of diseases are more likely to happen. And there's mounting evidence that as you open up forests, more people are in contact. There's a wonderful paper that came out recently that shows that there's more contacts between non-human primates and humans in more open areas. As you open up forests, we know from our own work that fruit bats tend to be much more common and the areas are much more favorable where humans are actually opening up forests. So the opportunities for these jumps of viruses from animals to humans is much more likely. That is mounting evidence. That's enough information now to actually tell the world that we have to stop the way that we do things in terms of deforestation for oil palm or whatever and try to come up with solutions to that problem. And as Simon says, it's not a question nobody should be pointing a finger at indigenous people, the rural people for what they're doing. It's really a different problem. It's a macro problem much more related to extractive industrialized forms of altering habitat. And that lesson has got to be learned. And the good thing about COVID in a way, you can call it that, good, is the fact that this event is affecting the pockets of people, the people who have a lot of money. Basically, it is an economic crisis as well as a natural crisis. So it should be very clear to everyone that we have to go back to the root cause of these issues and for us to understand better how we should be protecting these habitats and the people within them. Yeah, which brings us to the question this economic from our colleagues on traffic and it's beyond the direct impact of action by government to address COVID-19, such as ban, what do you see as some potential impact of the wider political and social economic change that are likely to occur, such as the likelihood of a deep economic recession as a result of the lockdown. So what will happen if in places where people are already barely strapping by already lower than in terms of economic possibility and will people move back to the village with people in presenting what what what do you think will happen. Lauren. Yeah, I think this isn't being talked about very much at the moment and you know we've seen COVID sort of increasing first of all in in China and then in in Europe, but there can be this. If it if it does start to increase in Africa and South America we're going to see some really devastating impacts on people who are already struggling. There's going to be the economic impacts and also the health impacts and when we've seen quite a lot of urbanization over the last 20 to 30 years, especially in Africa. When people come under economic and social strain they tend to move back to the rural areas, and we may see some of that urban to rural migration as a result of of this current virus. When that happens people often need to fall back on to safety net activities as well such as such as hunting and so one of the hypotheses is that you may find that people become more dependent on wild resources as a result of coronavirus but this is all very much hypothesis. Thank you. So I'm looking at the question that's trying not to. So then the question asked, Natalie talk about changing behavior she said that the knife virus came from bats to pig I want to know more about this concept of changing behavior what must we do now. Natalie, what up to you. I think first, first I think we really need to understand people's perceptions and values regarding white meat in a changing role because we tend to actually see the world as static. And we forget that things are changing very quickly. So for example, villages that we're eating a lot of white needs 10 years ago might not be doing so right now. And it changes even before we are able to even publish our own research so we have to look at it. You know as a dynamic system understand in this new in this constantly new context, particularly with trends of increased urbanization. This connection from nature, even from the young generation, even from people born in rural areas and living in rural areas. This disconnection with with nature. What does it mean for people's behavior towards white meat consumption towards hunting and so on. So we need more of that understanding right now. And then use that information to suggest communication strategies environmental education strategies that are adapted culturally to different contexts. And that can be, yeah, that can be actually adapted and that can help change behaviors towards what given government wants to see or even community wants to see, because of course the decision has to be legitimate so it has to be initiated from leaders, local leaders, national leaders, and they need to, I guess, open up the debates on what they want to see how they want their food security to be in the future. Do they want it to be dependent from other countries do they want it to be based what I'm seeing now for example in indigenous communities where we are working in Guyana now is that local leaders are using networks Facebook, Instagram and so on, to come up with messages saying, we need to keep our culture. See what's happening now. The only way we are resilient is because we still know how to hunt we still know how to fish. So we, we have to see, we have to see what understand what local leaders one with national governments one, and then perhaps support with this evidence of how people value what needs provide some ideas of have to how to build behavior change campaigns, which I think are could be very powerful can be very powerful. Yes. I also wanted to. Yes, good. Oh, just one thing I do agree with this extractive industries and any other human activities that actually disrupt natural ecosystems and bring people closer to nature natural environments. I also think that the world is learning how to be urban right now because very recently, not so long ago we became urban. We were mostly rural. 10 years ago more or less. We are now urban and now we have to live with a lot of problems that are due to our urbanization processes. And if you look at diseases, zoonotic diseases, very urban areas, growing per urban areas are particular hotspots for zoonotic diseases. So I think we thinking urbanization we thinking now that we're learning how to work remotely. Maybe, you know, there is a change there also that needs to occur in terms of how do we think urbanization, because I think these urbanization, particularly in areas that are new urban areas new growing areas in the middle of forests are big risks, big hotspots for zoonotic diseases to happen. And putting the issue of zoonotic diseases aside for a minute we already have seen that, you know, wildlife hunting in many areas is becoming unsustainable and one of the issues is that we are having increased populations who are still eating well meat and they're not dependent on wild meat very often, but they're eating it for cultural reasons or taste reasons. And, but that as Natalie says those, that can shift very quickly and there are the some anecdotal evidence that the younger generations aren't looking to wild meat for for their nutrition and are starting to change their, their ideas about eating it quite quickly and a number of NGOs are now looking at how we can sort of how how that behavior change can be helped to happen and how people in urban areas can shift their consumption of wild meat and and, you know, generally just that different changes to different consumption patterns. And that could help to reduce the pressure on on rural communities who are still very dependent on well meat and reduce the pressure on biodiversity. Yeah, I have an interesting question here on the issue of is it possible to promote wildlife farming instead of directly exploiting the resource from the wild. Is that particularly relevant in the case of China because a lot of the animals that are sold in the wet market, they are not coming from the wild they are coming from farming. Who wants to have a shot on this one. Well, maybe I can, I can say something I was like farming for us, you know, certainly in our group in our research. I've seen a lot of people from the outside sort of telling us that the solution to the one me problem is to encourage rural people or anywhere in the world to to farm the animals that are normally hunt in the forest. Our experience certainly from Latin America and from Africa is that a lot of these activities these initiatives don't really produce a lot of meat and there are many issues to do with disease that are issues to do with how you maintain these animals properly etc. China in particular have done this for a number of species, and there are, there is quite a large volume of meat that seems to be coming out of some of these wildlife farms. But to do this, you know, at the level of tropical forest areas throughout the world, from our evidence from our point of view, this is not the solution the solution is much more to do with allowing rural peoples and indigenous people to hunt sustainably. We need to stop the demand for wild meat in urban areas because that's where the sink for animals is, you know, and we've said it a number of times here we're dealing with a problem that needs to be dissected divided into three. Rural areas and rural peoples that need to be allowed to hunt sustainably, we need to stop the urban demand because that's where a lot of this commodity meat is coming in and being used for no reason other than the taste. And we need to come up with alternatives within the provincial towns because they are still dependent on the meat that comes out. So I wouldn't say that wildlife farming is a solution, but better administration of these three different sectors. And I have a somewhat related question is looking at the besides regulation and enforcement, do we not need the public education campaign, especially among educated urban consumers to patronize or to change the way wildlife is consumed? I think it would be so well Lauren has mentioned the fact that, you know, there are one or two initiatives now certainly our involvement in in Central Africa initiatives to to start social campaigns to change the mentality if you want other people who are consuming wild meat as a commodity. Things are also changing naturally, you know, in West Africa we know that there are the younger generation are not really wanting to consume wild meat because they think this is something that only their grandfathers used to do it's a it's a backward thing to do. However, we in areas where there is still quite a bit of consumption of wild meat. If you think of kinshasa that has over 10 million people, even if two grams of wild meat was consumed by each person, you would do have an enormous amount of wild meat still entering these cities. So social campaigns, working with these communities to change the way they do things must be the way forward. And then we have the one million dollar question. What strategy can you propose to discourage the bushmeat consumption in the region where people depend on it for food? Maybe Laura or Nathalie can answer that, but I'll add my two pennies first. I think again, it's a question of not prohibiting people in dependent areas to hunt. I am we do not believe that that is the way forward. What we can do and should do is actually work with these communities so that they can have a resource that continues into the future. In other words, sustainable use of a resource is what we want in these areas, not banning. I agree with John, you need to let the ladies talk. I agree with John that we don't want to be, we don't use the same techniques for everywhere. So rural communities that depend on wild meat, these are often many communities, very many small communities. Even if you wanted to try and change hunting practices in those communities be incredibly difficult because they're very small remote isolated communities spread across large areas. But, you know, the main, the main issue is that they do completely depend on wild meat, still many of them. And so trying to reduce that while meat consumption is just not ethically right. And I do see that we have larger problems in the consumption of wild meat in urban areas where it isn't an issue of food security. And going back to the global problem in these these areas where people do consume wild meat, the consumption of wild meat isn't the only issue it's also the destruction of the habitat that those animals live in. So at the same time as thinking of how we can regulate wild meat consumption and wild meat hunting, we also I think have to think about how we can reduce habitat loss. Natalie? Yeah, I think maybe as we're talking about solutions, I think I just want to add the fact that land tenure is a big is a big aspect that we need to consider. I have seen in communities where they have land tenure, they have the possibility to develop their own guidelines, their own rules about hunting about the use of natural resources about deforestation about they, they are much more resilient. They are able to sustain the use of their natural resources longer. Because, yeah, because there's a sense of ownership, and therefore local leaders have, have, have, have a stake and are respected for the fact that they are the guarantee of, of the land and therefore the resources so I think if I can compare to different the, the examples that we are seeing now in Latin America where indigenous communities have land tenure, not necessarily perfect, because many communities are asking for extensions of the, of these lands. But those communities are able to take decisions, even no matter what is happening nationally or globally. So they can protect certain species locally. They can, I think they can come up with much more clever management ideas than national regulations because they know the territories they're know they know their micro habitats. They know the specific species that are that is specifically vulnerable in that particular area. So, and they have the knowledge of their resources so I think land tenure is one of the aspects where the, the, the evolution of rights and land tenure to local communities is one of the things that I think we need to be working forwards to ensure sustainability at that level and local level. Okay, thank you very much. I think we are getting close to the end of our webinar. I will just answer one question and then we answer this one myself from Rajpuri. He's asking, do we need the more rigorous research program directed at identifying the causal chain that lead to these outbreaks? But the answer is yes, we need a program and can C4 develop a more rigorous program to research causes. I think we are very interested. And if anybody else in the group listening to us is interested, please don't hesitate to contact us. This is definitely a very important question. I would like to thank the attendees. I would like to thank Lauren, Natalie, John and all the C4 colleagues that help in the background to run this webinar. This is over for me from Bogor. Stay safe, stay healthy, all wash your hands and see you next time.