Systematic review of bushmeat surveys in the tropical African rainforest and recommendations for best scientific practices: A matter of protocol, scale and reporting

The bushmeat trade in tropical African rainforests is a pressing, multi-scale and multifaceted conservation issue. In order for bushmeat surveys to capture the complex dynamics of the trade and ultimately, its sustainability, there is a need for scale-adapted survey design and adequate reporting of results. We performed a systematic review of bushmeat survey methodology published in scientific literature from 1983 to 2021, with a focus on conservation biology articles reporting quantifiable data on the bushmeat trade (148 articles). Studies were predominantly biodiversity-oriented, whereas fewer focused on economics, modelling sustainability and con-servation policy. Bushmeat survey efforts were mostly North-driven and biased towards high GDP African countries. Surveys generally suffered from narrow spatiotemporal design and limited market.day efforts, and consistently omitted intermediary wholesalers from the commodity chains. Species identification was mostly based on indirect approaches (interviews) and when combined with direct observations, failed to report the taxonomic reference used. We observed blatant gaps in reporting on survey efforts, species numbers and vol-umes, and conservation status. The number of surveyed species - highly biased towards mammals - was generally low, the proportion of unidentified species was high in turtles and amphibians, and the implementation of DNA-typing has remained anecdotal. Lack of rigor in reporting and weaknesses in survey design globally challenge the repeatability of the bushmeat surveys conducted in tropical African rainforests and their ability to question the sustainability of the trade. Updating and harmonizing bushmeat surveys through regional moni-toring systems may be key to a better diffusion of bushmeat trade issues into state agendas.