Brent Stirton's Image

Brent Stirton (South Africa) documents the impacts of the illegal bushmeat trade across the Congo Basin.

A young, orphaned mountain gorilla called Mazuka holds up its remaining foot, its left one was amputated. At age three, Mazuka was found trapped in a snare left by bushmeat hunters.

Snares are the most widely used method employed to catch wild animals, but they are indiscriminate and leave animals to die either through suffocation if caught round the neck or starvation if caught by the foot.

Populations of great apes are highly vulnerable to any sort of hunting, as these long-lived species have low reproduction rates.