In the Amazonian provinces of Sucumbíos and Pastaza in Ecuador there are restaurants that offer visitors armadillo, guanta or roasted deer soup as an exotic delicacy, even though it is an environmental crime. The dishes made with bushmeat cost between 3.5 and 10 dollars, depending on the place. A hidden but constant trade.

-What do you have?

-Today, armadillo soup… I’m just cooking it, it’ll be ready in half an hour.

It is 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning in September at the market Los Plátanos (the plantains) in Puyo, capital of the province of Pastaza, Ecuador. The enquirer is a carrier known to the seller. Minutes later, a woman who looks like a foreign tourist asks a similar question, but the answer is very different: ‘No, we don’t sell bushmeat… It’s a crime, it’s forbidden.’

Far from the eyes and ears of the trader, the transporter leaves the explanation: the vendors are afraid of the sanctions they may face for selling wild animals. For this reason, they only offer them to those they identify as neighbors or acquaintances. ‘I’ll come back and bring you the plate so you can see. Or maybe you should come with me to eat,’ he says with a touch of cheek. Indeed, when he returns, he is served a plate with part of the armadillo’s shell and one of its legs sticking out.

It is a gourmet dish that is a specialty of this area. Despite the fact that article 247 of Ecuador’s Organic Integral Penal Code (COIP) states that it is a crime to hunt, fish and capture wildlife for commercial purposes. But these are only empty words. This report found that the trafficking of wild animals or protected species to supply kitchens in the Ecuadorian Amazon is a common practice, especially in rural areas. And the State does very little to combat it.

According to the COIP, the consumption of bushmeat is only allowed within indigenous territories, as long as it is destined for the subsistence of the families, i.e. for self-consumption. This is not the same as selling the meat of these animals to visitors or tourists on the roadside, which is what was found while working on this investigation.

In our research we were able to corroborate that at least five restaurants in the city of Puyo also sell armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus), guanta (Cuniculus paca) and guangana (Tayassu pecari) meat. And animal rights organizations claim that this is a widespread practice in the Ecuadorian Amazon [ .

What is striking is that despite the fact that the infraction is clearly being committed, the State does very little to sanction and combat it. In its fifth National Report on Biological Biodiversity published in 2015, the Ministry of Environment cited a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) on bushmeat trafficking in Yasuní National Park. According to the study, between 13,000 and 14,000 kilos of bushmeat were sold annually at the Pompeya market on the banks of the Napo River alone.

The data have not been updated, but the fact is that today in the Ecuadorian Amazon there are more than a few restaurants that offer trusted diners dishes based on wild animal meat, especially guanta and armadillo, but also peccaries (wild pigs), deer and other species. In the aforementioned market Los Plátanos, for example, this can be verified at one of the traditional food stalls. Under the gaze of dozens of people, a diner serves himself an armadillo hand in a bowl of soup, accompanied by yucca, green plantain and malanga (Colocasia esculenta). He paid $5 for the dish.

‘I like the taste of the armadillo fat,’ says another diner. The vendor, a Kichwa woman (one of the eleven indigenous nationalities that inhabit the Ecuadorian Amazon), recognizes that it is a crime to offer this dish: ‘If the Ministry of the Environment comes, I can get into trouble. I sell because the people from the communities bring me and they also need the money. They hunt them and bring them to sell; if I don’t buy from them, they sell elsewhere. According to bushmeat vendors, selling bushmeat is the only way for some indigenous people to get some cash when they go out to the cities.

The Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition (MAATE) only presents overall figures for seizures of wild animals. It does not differentiate between those destined for consumption for their meat and those captured for pets, despite the fact that this was requested by means of a public request for information. Analyzing the figures provided for this report, it is striking how wildlife rescues and seizures have fallen since 2019. If that year there were 4,493, in 2023 there were 700, 6 times less. And this year the trend remains the same.

The Ministry was consulted about this striking drop in seizures, but there was no official explanation. ‘MAATE has no control capacity. Since the merger between the Water Secretariat (SENAGUA) and the Ministry, there has been a lack of personnel for control tasks. Nor do they have the resources to carry out controls, such as vehicles or petrol”, explains biologist Pedro Gualoto, a former official of MAATE in the province of Orellana.

Added to this is the lack of continuous leadership in the Ministry of Environment; during a period of only three years, they have changed ministers five times. Diego Naranjo, a specialist who works in wildlife control at the Ministry of Environment in Orellana, says that ‘trafficking in the Amazon region is totally different from other areas of the country because of its high biodiversity’. He mentions that this has put at risk species such as guanganas (wild pigs or white-lipped peccaries), willow pigs, large and small charapa tortoises, and chorongo monkeys.

Naranjo laments the fact that the environmental crime of illegal bushmeat consumption in Ecuador continues unabated. In 2023 alone, 138 kilos of this product were seized, including mammals, fish and reptiles, a figure that, according to Naranjo, will surely be surpassed in 2024. The highest proportion of confiscations of this type at the national level are made in the Amazonian municipality of Orellana, according to a report by the Ministry of the Environment. The Pompeya market is located there, where recently, on 7 November 2024, 80 pounds of wild meat of white-lipped peccary, red deer and nine-banded armadillo were seized.

The Pompeya market, located on the banks of the Napo River, opposite one of the entrances to the Yasuní National Park (YNP), is a traditional market where, until a few years ago, live and dead wild animals were sold. Even though this trade is no longer carried out in the open, it is still very active. Illegal hunting is one of the main causes for the disappearance of hundreds of species. Ecuador tops the Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List in Latin America, with 2,714 endangered animal and plant species. Among them is the white-lipped peccary, whose meat is served in the dishes prepared in one of the restaurants visited for this report.

According to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the hunting of this animal (also known as huangana) is of concern. ‘It is much more sensitive because they don’t kill one, but 30 or 40 at the same time, because they live in large groups,’ says Galo Zapata Ríos, scientific director of WCS in Ecuador.

Apart from the fact that their sale is illegal, the consumption of these species represents a risk to human health. Many of these animals are reservoirs of certain diseases, explains Pedro Gualoto Farinango, biologist and zookeeper at the zoo in the Ecuadorian town of Guayllabamba: ‘In the case of armadillo meat consumption, there is a risk of leprosy contagion because they are healthy carriers of the bacteria. In the case of deer, peccaries, guantas and tapir, there is also a risk of transition of gastrointestinal diseases due to undercooked meat (parasites such as giardia intestinalis)’.

The expert adds that ‘during contact with ectoparasites, there is a risk of typhus, which is a zoonosis transmitted by fleas and mites that are present in wildlife. Sarcocystosis, toxoplasmosis, trichinosis and taeniasis are also common diseases from eating bushmeat. WCS has monitored the sale of bushmeat in the Ecuadorian Amazon for about 20 years. They do not have up-to-date data, but mention as an example that just over a decade ago, in September 2011, an average of 13,000 kilos of bushmeat was sold in the Pompeya market alone, located on the banks of the Napo River near the Yasuní National Park.

But these health risks do not stop people from consuming their desired bushmeat. ‘The demand is great, widespread, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. But it is in our interest to conserve wild animals as well because otherwise people will run out of protein. In the Amazon there are still an estimated half a million people who depend on wildlife for food. And those people have no money,’ explains Galo Zapata Ríos, scientific director of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Ecuador. Each pound of armadillo or guanta costs 5 dollars, and each pound usually yields two plates. Zapata Ríos does not believe that these two animal species are endangered, because their populations are stable despite hunting.

In another study, carried out between 2005 and 2007 in the same market, WCS recorded the sale of 12,000 kilos of bushmeat and 77 live animals of at least 56 species. From this data, they estimated that between 13,000 and 14,000 kilos of bushmeat were traded in this market each year. It is difficult to map, but the negative impacts on the forests are evident: parrots, primates, guanta, deer… And it is also very serious because it is equivalent to emptying 45 hectares of animals,’ says Zapata Ríos. The ecosystem cannot function well if the animals disappear. Ecuador is the most densely populated country in South America, so this demand for bushmeat is not sustainable. The only reason why these animals have not disappeared is because Yasuní is huge,’ he adds.

Bushmeat on the menu
Article 247 of the COIP establishes that ‘the person who hunts, fishes, captures, collects, extracts, possesses, transports, traffics, benefits from, exchanges or commercializes specimens or their parts, their constituent elements, products and derivatives, of flora or wild terrestrial, marine or aquatic fauna, of threatened, endangered and migratory species, listed at national level by the National Environmental Authority as well as international instruments or treaties ratified by the State, will be sanctioned with a prison sentence of one to three years’.

Although the regulations are clear, the sale of wild animals is commonplace. South of Puyo, on the road to Macas, there is a turnoff at kilometer 16. There, at the Puente de las Boas, guanta and armadillo soup are also offered. It is the weekend and bushmeat in the restaurants is scarce today. ‘I only bought a small guanta and we’ve already run out of dishes’, says one of the vendors. In this place built by the Autonomous Decentralized Provincial Government of Pastaza (GAD Pastaza) there are four traditional food stalls. All of them sell bushmeat dishes, but they are usually sold out before noon. Dozens of diners come from Puyo and Macas to buy these dishes. Most of them are mestizos and the few who dare to talk say that they like the taste, that it is part of their traditions.

Following that road, on the turnoff to Palora (another Amazonian town), there is another complex of five restaurants and a tarabita which, like the one at the Boas Bridge, was built by the state. In this case by the municipal government of Mera, it is the Puerto Santana lookout point. Here they gather to cross the river to Palora in a basket propelled by an old pick-up truck engine. A sign marks the spot from where there is a panoramic view of the Pastaza River. The sign has the logos of the GAD of Mera, the GIZ (the German Society for International Cooperation) and the Ministries of Tourism and Environment. In this place with an apparent state presence, bushmeat is sold.

The restaurants at the lookout point offer dishes with guanta, armadillo and deer. But there is also grilled agouti and smoked huangana (wild pig or peccary). Each dish sells for 5 dollars and a pound of meat for the same price. Vendors say that the supply is not constant and that there are weeks when they bring them several animals and others, like this time, when they only have one type of meat to offer. When asked about the origin of wild animals, their answers are evasive. ‘From the communities, from the forest…’. They also recognize that it is a crime, but they don’t give a damn. A vendor shamelessly opens the fridge and shows the peccary, agouti and armadillo.

A few meters from the viewpoint is the entrance to the Yawa Jee Protected Forest and Vegetation, run by an indigenous Shuar/Kichwa family. Here, too, the state has its part to play: there is a sign from the Ministry of the Environment, but also from international cooperation (the NGOs The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International, the Spanish Embassy in Ecuador and the Spanish Cooperation).

While wild animals and plants are protected in the forest, a few meters away they are eaten roasted on the roadside. But this consumption is not only restricted to the province of Pastaza. When travelling through Sucumbíos, in the north of the Ecuadorian Amazon, the situation is similar. Saturdays and Sundays are the days when most of these dishes are offered. In the market of las Nacionalidades in the city of Lago Agrio (the provincial capital, near the Colombian border), bushmeat is just another product on offer at the vegetable stalls. The vendors buy it from the indigenous people. This was acknowledged by two of them during the report. The selling price: 3.5 dollars per pound of bushmeat.

In two restaurants on the outskirts of Lago Agrio, guanta, armadillo, deer, boa and even caiman are offered clandestinely. But not to just anyone: the presence of irregular groups and organized criminal gangs means that all strangers are under constant observation. In a dining room located on the road to El Coca, the atmosphere is tense and the diners speak in hushed tones as the team of journalists enter, accompanied by a local inhabitant. It is the driver of the van transporting the reporters who speaks and asks for prices: 5 dollars for guanta soup or roast venison. Fried boa costs 10. Venison, similar to beef, is served as a grilled steak, accompanied by cassava, fried green plantain and a salad of onion and tomato.

The journey continues to the north-east of Lago Agrio. The response in the villages of Chiritza, Palma Roja and Aguas Negras is similar: ‘No hunting, it is forbidden’. But the reality is different: bushmeat is obtained on demand and sold through a network of contacts. The driver makes a couple of calls and receives confirmation that they have guanta for 3.50 dollars a pound in Chiritza, a village 40 minutes from Lago Agrio. As you move towards Cuyabeno Fauna Production Reserve, there are several signs warning that wildlife trafficking is a crime. But close to these warnings, bushmeat is sold. You just have to know where to buy guanta, armadillos or deer to prepare them in soups.

According to WCS, this is also a cross-border environmental crime. ‘We know of people coming from the Peruvian Amazon to buy bushmeat in Ecuador. They take it to sell it to the market in Iquitos – the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon – ‘where the demand is huge. This has been happening in recent years, as there are no strict controls and it is easy to move in these areas,’ explains Zapata Ríos. During the reporter’s visit to the Amazon, no control operations were observed, neither by the military, nor by the police, nor by park rangers, despite the fact that there are protected areas such as the Cuyabeno Fauna Production Reserve, in the province of Sucumbíos.

Thus, safe in the knowledge that the state is not around to enforce the law, restaurants continue to prepare and sell gourmet dishes based on meat from protected species. Because for diners, the taste of eating them outweighs the penalty for breaking the law.

This work was carried out with the support of Earth Journalism Network.