Drought is a problem all over.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>Joseph Munyao is worried. Weekly earnings are falling steadily at the two butcher shops he owns near the edge of Tsavo National Park, Kenya's largest wildlife reserve. Competitors hit by the slump have closed down, and even Mr. Munyao's once-regular beef customers are staying away. <br />n<br />nIt could be simple economics. Drought has cut cattle stocks, forcing up beef prices in this country where more than half the population lives on less than a dollar a day.</blockquote><br />n<br />nThis has lead to an interesting problem in <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0131/p07s01-woaf.html" target="_new">Kenya</a> though, bush meat poaching.<br />n<br />n<blockquote> Illegal hunting is flooding the market with inexpensive "bush meat." The poachers who set these traps were once after elephant and rhino ivory, but controversial trade bans have shut down those sales.<br />n<br />n While the scope of the problem is not fully known, conservationists say it could endanger Africa's wildlife as much the great herd massacres of the 1970s and 1980s.<br />n<br />n "Kenyans are poor. They do not have the money to buy beef and goat, but every man wants to eat meat," says Mr. Munyao, a smartly-dressed father of four sons, at his butcher shop in Sofia, 220 miles southeast of Kenya's capital, Nairobi. "Now they are eating wild animals from the land and not coming to my shops."</blockquote><br />n<br />nAny meat in a pinch I guess. I sure can understand. A person would want to be able to feed his family and any way to put it on the table goes, whether it's right or not. Just illustrates how lucky we are in America to have plenty of food even if parts if the country are in a drought. I ain't saying people here aren't hungry but the pressure is a lot less intense. Another big factor in this is the standard of living. We have a higher standard of living here and relatively little of our money goes towards our food expenditures where in poorer countries it takes more of their wages to feed themselves. The true solution to this would be to raise the standard of living. That's really hard to do but in the long term would help the situation.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>But poverty remains the driving force behind the trade.<br />n<br />n "I have to feed my family and pay for my sons' education so they do not live like me," he says. "How else can I do this in this place? My heart does not like me to kill these animals, I know it is against the law, but we are poor, we have no choice."</blockquote><br />n<br />n<b>Poverty is not a shame, but the being ashamed of it is. English proverb</b>