Melissa Remis, a Purdue University professor of anthropology, started out studying gorillas in the Central African Republic forest. But she decided the endangered villagers around her needed help more.
While studying lowland gorillas and their interactions with their environment during the 1990s, Remis first met the BaAka people, a native community of hunters and foragers. The BaAka helped Remis track gorillas for her research and welcomed her into their environment. She lived with them in the forest for three years.
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At the time, Remis said she didn't notice the people having nutritional problems, aside from gastrointestinal parasites.
But years of encroachment by hunters and loggers — and civil unrest in the Central African Republic that has driven more people from the cities into the forest — have meant mounting pressure on the forest resources on which the BaAka depend, and growing malnutrition among the people.
"Because the (Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Reserve) has specific places for research, tourism, hunting and logging, these people are not able to get the same food they used to," Remis said.
"It really is increased pressure on the forest resources that has resulted in over-exploitation and decline alongside of the rules and restrictions on what part of the forest can be used for which activities," Remis said.
In summer 2012, Remis and Carolyn A. Jost Robinson, a former Purdue graduate student, tested the health of 141 people through physical measures and dietary surveys to see how the wildlife decline and changing economics affected the population.
"Because we had long-standing relations with them, they welcomed our presence," Remis said.
The two researchers chose two BaAka villages to examine — Mossapoula and Yandoumbe. They tested people from both villages for hemoglobin levels and body mass index. They found many with signs of low hemoglobin and chronic malnutrition.
"These hunters and gatherers were eating one meal, and only a small percentage consumed meat," said Remis, whose research was recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Without their customary access to wild meat supplies, , many villagers are without enough protein and have low iron.
"In order to compensate study subjects for the time they had spent with us during data collection and interviews, which prevented them from going out to forage for food, we did offer a meal and/or a small daily ration of food," she said.
The team provided anti-worm medication after the conclusion of the data collection to participants who tested positive for worms, as well as access to medical care and nutritional supplements for babies at the nearby health clinic.
"We also worked to increase the training of local health workers and volunteers so they could better step up and provide some initial help to those who needed it," she said.
From West Lafayette, Remis also is looking into other wild food that the BaAka eat, such as forest nuts, to see if they have sufficient protein to meet their needs.
Now that her research has been published, Remis is looking forward to continuing her travels to Central Africa. Currently, Remis has students set up in Cameroon, where there will soon be a palm oil plantation. There, Remis' team will conduct similar studies to compare the two African countries.
"We're going to ask the same set of questions: How do these (human-induced) changes in environment influence people?" she said.