Data collection
The study covered five of the most active bushmeat sites in Côte
d’Ivoire. It includes (i) four bushmeat markets in the district of
Abidjan, namely Yopougon Siporex (5°21’N, -4°04’W), Abobo Grand Marché
(5°26’N, -4°01’W), Abobo Mairie (5°25’ N, -4°01’W) and Adjamé (5°21’N,
-4°01’W), and (ii) the restaurants of Toumodi (6°33’N, -5°01’W) as a
renowned hub for bushmeat trafficking in central Côte d’Ivoire (Dindé et
al., 2017).
Bushmeat sites were surveyed from December 2019 to January 2021,
including the period during which governmental measures were taken in
response to the COVID-19 pandemic (Milleliri et al., 2021: see Fig. 1).
We chose to measure the weekly effect of governmental measures from the
first week of April 2020, i.e. the week following that of when the
declaration of state of health emergency and of the closure of chop chop
bars was announced. The end of governmental measures was fixed to the
second week of October 2020, as there was no specific date associated to
the final release of constraints.
Sites were visited by JKG, SGB and a trained field assistant twice per
week between 08.00 am and 2.00 pm, every three days. An additional
control survey was conducted in September 2021 (week 92 after survey
start) in order to compare the observed number of sellers with that from
predictive growth curve modelling (see below).
We counted the number of sellers on each site as a proxy of the bushmeat
activity. We systematically verified that each seller had his/her own
stall(s), and was not a collaborator of another seller. We posit that
the number of sellers –as one of the supply determinants of a market
(Key et al., 2000)– is expected to positively correlate with the
quantity of bushmeat supply. Weekly estimates per site were derived from
the mean counts of sellers per week per bushmeat site (Appendix Table
1). Sellers were informed of the objectives of the study and
participated to the survey on a voluntary basis.