Illegal hunting of wildlife for food is devastating wildlife across sub-Saharan Africa.

"The African bushmeat trade is huge," Jane Goodall, the distinguished primatologist told Smithsonian magazine for the January issue. "Tons and tons of wild animal meat (are) trucked into the urban centers, and a good deal is shipped to other African countries and to other continents."

A study in the journal Science this past November said the bushmeat trade was among the "greatest threats to the persistence of tropical wildlife."

The number of western lowland gorillas in the Congo Basin has fallen from about 110,000 to fewer than 40,000 in the past two decades because of poaching, loss of habitat to logging and development, and disease, including the deadly Ebola virus, says Richard Carroll, director of an African program for the World Wildlife Fund. "It's a crisis situation," he says, "and that's why the anti-poaching program is vitally important."

David Greer runs anti-poaching patrols in a Central African Republic park, risking his life virtually every day to protect some of Africa's most significant animals, including western lowland gorillas and forest elephants. He is based in the Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Special Reserve, home to one of the richest and most diverse assemblies of animals, birds, fish and insects on earth.

That 1,220-square-mile sanctuary connects with protected forestlands in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, forming a 4,000-square-mile wilderness reserve overseen by the three governments with financial help from the WWF. Greer is employed by the WWF as a park advisor and empowered by the Central African Republic government to enforce anti-poaching laws.

Greer, a primatologist who had previously never wielded anything more lethal than a ballpoint pen, is one of a new breed of eco-warrior who carries a gun in the fight against the slaughter of forest animals.

Greer decided to take up arms against the poachers a year ago. He knew from the Pygmies, peaceful masters of the rain forest who have inhabited the Congo Basin for more than a millennium, that poachers were slaughtering large numbers of elephants, gorillas and other animals. He also knew that the leader of the anti-poaching patrols had quit and that the guards had become "demotivated," as he put it, "and had a sense of helplessness with the barrage of poaching."

With the help of his deputy, Josue Nambama, a well-connected Bantu, he concentrated on building a network of sources to provide information on the poachers and hired new guards, putting one team on alert 24 hours a day and assigning another to find and destroy snares. In addition, guards set up roadblocks to catch bushmeat traders and patrol animal-rich areas in the reserve, up to 10 days in the field at a time.

In the past year, Greer and his 48 men have destroyed more than 30,000 illegal trapping devices. Additionally, their efforts have led to the arrest and imprisonment of 20 poachers and discouraged many more.

After poaching, the threat to Congo Basin's gorillas that most concerns Greer is Ebola, the highly infectious hemorrhagic fever virus that was first recognized in central Africa in 1976. A recent outbreak in the Republic of Congo killed up to 90 percent of the gorillas in some areas.

Not long ago, Greer arranged a meeting of local health officials and village chiefs, and urged them to warn their people not to slaughter or eat monkeys, gorillas or chimps. "That's how it spread in the Congo," he says, meaning that people acquired the disease from handling an infected primate and passed the virus to others.

Some experts are concerned that bushmeat tainted with Ebola virus or other infectious agents might be smuggled into the United States. "Thousands of west and central Africans live in Florida, California, New York, as well as Atlanta and many other cites, and when they celebrate weddings, birthdays or other occasions, _1/8many_3/8 want to eat bushmeat from their homeland," says Richard Ruggiero, and Africa program officer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Ebola threat, whether to primates directly or to people exposed to the infected animals, has added urgency to conservation efforts. Saving gorillas could also mean saving human lives.

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