The COVID 19 has had un-precedent impacts at simultaneous times on diverse sectors of local and national economies, with severe changes on access to markets, income and movements of people. This global crisis raised attention to animal–human interactions and also impacted the way people use wildlife for food. Wildlife contributes to food security, health and nutrition across tropical forest regions among rural and urban people. However, the world community now views local wildlife markets with considerable scepticism and even disdain, since the likely origin of COVID 19 is zoonotic and a general public opinion has formed that the initial infection occurred in a market, although there is some evidence to the contrary. Besides a few theoretical papers speculating on the potential effects of COVID19 on the use of wildlife, there is limited evidence from the field on the actual impacts of the pandemic on the use and trade of wildlife across the tropics. In this symposium, we present examples from South America and Central Africa to describe the changes in the use and trade of wildlife for food during the pandemic.