Hunters Driving Asian Species to Extinction

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http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2002/2002L-04-10-06.html

 

Hunters Driving Asian Species to Extinction

 

KHAO YAI NATIONAL PARK, Thailand, April 10, 2002

 

(ENS) - Uncontrolled hunting and trade form the

greatest threats to wildlife and wild lands in Asia,

charges a group of experts from the Wildlife

Conservation Society. The group, which held a workshop

in Thailand's Khao Yai National Park last week, said

long term studies show that current patterns of

hunting and wildlife trade are not sustainable, and

could drive wildlife to extinction.

 

Their report cites examples including Vietnam, where a

dozen large mammals and birds have gone locally

extinct since the end of the Indochina War, including

the Sumatran rhino, Siamese crocodile and Eld's deer.

 

The workshop at Thailand's Khao Yai National Park

brought together wildlife experts from nine countries

across Asia - including China, Cambodia, Lao People's

Democratic Republic (PDR), Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand,

Malaysia, Indonesia and India - joined by global

wildlife hunting and trade experts from the Wildlife

Conservation Society's (WCS) headquarters at the Bronx

Zoo in New York.

 

WCS conservationists noted that the global scale of

illegal wildlife trade is enormous. The annual trade

in wildlife related products is worth about U.S. $8

billion, forming an industry on a scale surpassed only

by the illegal trade in drugs and arms.

Across Indochina, for example, tigers have been

selectively hunted to local extinction for the trophy

and traditional medicine trade, WCS surveys show. In

Myanmar, surveys by the Department of Forestry and WCS

found tigers at just three of 17 sites across the

country, and interviews suggest that a group of tiger

hunters from northern Myanmar have systematically

hunted tigers to extinction across much of the

country.

 

At the same time, local subsistence consumption of

wild game, often called bushmeat hunting, continues to

grow.

 

" Asia is way ahead of the curve when it comes to

wildlife trade, " said Dr. Elizabeth Bennett, director

of the WCS hunting and wildlife trade program and

co-organizer of the meeting. " In Africa bushmeat is a

critical problem because wildlife is still locally

abundant. "

 

In Asia, decades of unconstrained hunting and trade

have almost wiped out many game animals. The WCS warns

that this could be just the first stage of the losses.

 

 

" Across Asia, many species are living in only a small

fraction of their original habitat, " noted Dr. Joshua

Ginsberg, director of WCS's Asia and Africa programs.

" If hunting persists in these areas we will see a huge

wave of extinction in the next two decades. "

 

Over half the prime protected areas in tropical Asia

have already lost at least one large mammal due to

hunting, the WCS report shows. Economically valuable

species such as Sumatran and Javan rhinos and Siamese

crocodiles are specifically targeted and are nearly

extinct across Indochina.

 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, many conservationists

and development experts argued that sustainable use of

wildlife would lead to its conservation. The WCS

argues that recent data show that trade in wildlife is

often uncontrolled across south and southeast Asia,

and that hunting and wildlife trade are leading to the

extinction of wildlife species.

 

Hunting has put half of Asia's turtles on the

endangered species list, with at least one million

turtles exported from Indonesia alone each year. Over

a million kilograms (more than two million pounds) of

snakes are imported to Shanghai, China, each year

serving as a luxury food item for that city's

burgeoning middle class.

The international trade in birds, one of the best

documented segments of the wildlife trade, is on an

enormous scale, with more than 350,000 sold in a

single Jakarta, Indonesia market each year.

 

At Thailand's Bangkok Weekend Market, the trade has

been pushed underground, yet in the late 1990s

investigators documented the sale of 72,000 birds from

276 species in just 25 visits to the market. Twenty

percent of these species were legally protected in

Thailand, while others were banned from international

trade by the Convention on International Trade in

Endangered Species (CITES).

 

For those people in Asia who still rely on wildlife

for their daily protein, uncontrolled trade is

threatening their livelihoods, according to the WCS

report. In South India forests, for example, studies

show that illegal hunting of big game such as deer,

pigs and primates, reduced wildlife densities by 80

percent, making it much harder for poor forest people

to sustain themselves.

 

Cross border trade in wildlife threatens food security

in parts of the Lao PDR. In a single province in Laos,

$3.6 million of wildlife is exported every year,

including pangolins, cats, bears and primates.

 

The WCS warns that immediate action is needed to

ensure the survival of Asia's wildlife and forests. At

the WCS workshop last week, participants made three

core recommendations:

 

Governments must renew their commitment to meeting

their treaty obligations under the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Every country in the region, except Lao PDR, is a

signatory to CITES.

 

Commercial trade of wildlife must be severely

restricted or eliminated across much of the region,

through both national policies and international

collaborations.

 

Governments throughout the region must strengthen

their capacity to protect wildlife in protected areas

and forest reserves, through good law enforcement and

education.

 

If these steps are not begun immediately, " all that

will be left are silent forests, empty of the birds

and mammals that are critical to the health of the

forest, " warned Dr. Madhu Rao, co-organizer of the WCS

workshop.

 

 

 

 

 

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