Thais Crack Down on Wildlife Trafficking (washingtonpost.com)

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50757-2003Dec9.html

 

Thais Crack Down on Wildlife Trafficking

Search for Endangered Species Nets More Than 33,000 Animals in Six Weeks

 

By Ellen Nakashima

Washington Post Foreign Service

Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A18

 

BANGKOK -- Raids at private homes and

zoos here during the past six weeks have exposed

Thailand as a major gateway for a thriving

international trade in endangered species, police

and wildlife activists said.

More than 33,000 animals, including

tigers, bears, orangutans and birds, have been

recovered. The animal smuggling industry, police

say, is second only to drug trafficking in

profitability. A pair of live orangutans can

bring up to $25,000, police said.

Spurred by the discovery in October of a

house crammed with tiger carcasses and bear paws,

along with starving animals, police have cracked

down on wildlife smugglers, taking them to court,

seizing animals and vowing to wipe out the

practice.

" I don't know of any other country in the

world that's mobilized their national police

force to hit wildlife traders, " said Steven

Galster, director of the regional office of Wild

Aid, an animal rights organization.

The animals, prized for their meat,

medicinal value and putative sexual healing

powers, are illegally imported from Indonesia,

Malaysia and other countries, and sent to China,

Korea, Japan and elsewhere, police and activists

say. Sometimes, as in the case of tigers, they

are bred or captured here, then illegally sold to

wildlife traders.

" We are one of the biggest wildlife

animal smuggling centers in the world, " said Maj.

Gen. Sawake Pinsinchai, a veteran police officer.

His three decades of tangling with drug smugglers

and gangsters, he said, did not prepare him for

what he saw when his team of forestry police

officers entered a house on Bangkok's outskirts

in late October: tiger carcasses, quartered and

on ice; 21 bear paws, severed at the joint; six

starving tigers in damp, cramped cages; five live

bears; and four baby orangutans, one so weakened

that it soon died.

" A tragic scene, " Sawake said. " It boggles the imagination. "

One tiger had just been skinned,

revealing a .22-caliber bullet hole just above

the eye. " Nobody shot a tiger like that in the

forest, " Galster said. Investigators also found

notes listing restaurant orders for bear paws and

tiger meat, he said.

Two weeks later, Sawake's team raided an

open market, seizing more than 1,000 protected

species of birds. At another house, they found

civet cats, pythons and a baby orangutan, dead in

a freezer.

Then in quick succession, police raided a

private zoo in Bangkok, a private tiger zoo in a

province east of here and a zoo-entertainment

complex in southern Thailand. In each, they found

many more animals than the zoos had registered.

At Safari World here, for example, police found

114 orangutans though the zoo had registered only

44.

Police and activists said they did not

know how much the trade is worth, or how many

animals are illegally bought and sold. But

Thailand's 1,800 miles of porous borders; easy

access to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam,

Malaysia and Indonesia; and its culture of

corruption make it an attractive place for

illicit trade, officials said.

The crackdown follows a 90-day government

amnesty, during which 60,000 people registered

more than 1 million birds and animals listed as

protected by the Thai government. For those who

did not register during the amnesty, owning

protected animals is illegal. Sawake, who said he

was inspired by Queen Sirikit's birthday message

in August urging greater wildlife protection,

surveyed the wildlife black market in Bangkok,

where traders come to make deals. He drew up a

list of 240 suspect traders. Now, he said, he has

a network of more than 70,000 informants, and a

hotline for tips.

But he said his task was complicated by a

weak law that gives convicted wildlife traders

sentences of up to four years in jail and fines

of $1,000. Police have been using customs laws to

charge orangutan smugglers, a strategy that can

bring a penalty of four times the animal's value

and up to 10 years in prison. In some cases, they

use money-laundering laws to confiscate a

convicted smugglers' assets.

The animals are smuggled by syndicates,

Sawake said. An orangutan could be sent from

Sumatra in Indonesia to Malaysia or to southern

Thailand by boat, then trucked up to Bangkok, he

said. Bears are often smuggled in from Burma and

Cambodia.

Tigers are protected by the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild

Fauna and Flora (CITES), which bans their trade

for commercial purposes, but allows them to be

kept for breeding and research. Most of the

tigers seized here were probably bred in

captivity, police said.

What's new about the Thai crackdown is

that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra himself is

intent on ending illegal wildlife trading and

that smugglers are no longer being protected by

corrupt officials, Sawake said.

Zoo officials declined to comment on the

issue, but as a group have issued a letter of

protest, saying the crackdown was scaring off

tourists.

 

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

 

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