Is the production of chocolate having a negative impact?
Scott McGraw, an anthropologist at The Ohio State University, is studying the dark side of cocoa farming.
W. Scott McGraw is a professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University. There, he is an evolutionary anatomist and primate behavioralist with primary research interests in Africa. He earned his PhD at SUNY Stony Brook in 1996.
Bitter Side of Cocoa
People around the world love their chocolate, but growing demand for the sweet stuff has its bitter side. I’ve seen that bitter side as an anthropologist who studies rare and endangered primates in the Ivory Coast, a west African country that is the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans. Cocoa beans, of course, are the main ingredient of chocolate, and the demand for this crop is taking its toll on endangered primates.
My colleagues in the Ivory Coast and I recently spent 208 days surveying 23 national parks and forest reserves in the country. What we found shocked us. More than three-quarters of these protected areas had been transformed into illegal cocoa farms. Of the 23 protected areas, 16 had more than 65 percent of their forests degraded by farms, logging or other human disturbance.
The impact on primates has been dramatic. Overall, 13 of the protected areas had lost their entire primate populations, while another five had lost half of their species. One species of monkey – Miss waldron’s Red Colobus – was not seen during this survey and has not officially been sighted since 1978. It is probably extinct.
Two other monkeys – the Roloway monkey and the White-Naped Mangabey – were seen in only two reserves and are critically endangered, at least partially due to the habitat destruction caused by illegal cocoa farms.
While what we found is disappointing, there is still time to save the wildlife. First, the land within protected areas needs to be actually protected.
One promising development is the establishment of community-based bio-monitoring programs that involve foot patrols in protected areas conducted by local villagers.
Let’s hope this and other programs can protect these lands before we lose any more endangered species.
Read More: OSU News: Bitter Chocolate
