Illegal wildlife trade takes heavy toll in Vietnam

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Illegal wildlife trade takes heavy toll in Vietnam

 

By Frank Zeller Mon Aug 14, 12:01 AM ET

 

HANOI (AFP) - Snarling inside a cage and licking its wounds, a clouded

leopard is recovering from being wire-trapped by poachers.

 

The jungle feline is one lucky cat. It was rescued last month when

Vietnamese guards surprised a trafficker carrying the sedated animal near

the Chinese border. But while the 18-kilogram (40-pound) female is now

recuperating in an animal rescue centre, alongside black bears, gibbons and

other rare species, many more wild animals end up in restaurants,

traditional pharmacies and souvenir shops. Southeast Asia's forests, a

biological treasure trove, have become a gold mine for wildlife traffickers,

say ecologists.

 

And Vietnam has become a major Asian crossroads, with animals being smuggled

from Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia and as far as India for sale

here and for export to China, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.Top of Form

 

 

 

" This clouded leopard could have earned the smugglers 70 million dong (4,300

dollars), " said Nguyen Van Nhung, a veterinarian at the Hanoi Wild Animal

Rescue Centre. " Its meat would have been eaten and its bones ground up for

medicine, " he said, pointing at the animal now pacing in its metal cage.

" People believe it makes them stronger. "

 

In the decade since the centre opened it has only received one other clouded

leopard, said director Ngo Ba Oanh, which may be testimony to the heavy toll

the trade has taken on Vietnam's natural environment. " The cases that are

picked up are the tip of the iceberg, " said Eric Coull, Greater Mekong

representative of conservation group WWF. Over-exploitation for the illegal

wildlife trade now rivals habitat destruction as a major threat to the

survival of many species, he said. " Nowhere is this more evident than in

Vietnam, where wildlife populations are dwindling at an alarming rate due to

illegal trade and consumption. "

 

The animals at the rescue centre are a cross-section of the species being

slowly wiped out. There are gibbons found in a Hanoi cafe, black bears

confiscated as cubs near the Lao border, and macaques from the Mekong delta.

Dr Nguyen Van Song of the Hanoi Agricultural University estimates 3,000

tonnes of wildlife and wildlife products are shipped in and out of Vietnam

every year, with only about three percent intercepted. Half of the trade is

for domestic consumption, the other half for export, he said in a report,

mainly through the Chinese border crossings at Lang Son and Mong Cai, the

area where the clouded leopard was found.

 

Song believes up to 3,500 kilograms of illegal wildlife goods pass through

these border towns daily, including pangolins, lizards, turtles, cobras,

pythons, monkeys, bears and tigers. Smugglers have used ambulances, wedding

cars and funeral hearses to smuggle the contraband, or hired foot porters

through middlemen so they cannot reveal their bosses' identities if caught.

Permits and licenses are sometimes forged, and customs officials threatened

or bribed, Song wrote, blaming " influential people " , a euphemism for

organized crime. -- " We can eat anything with four feet except the table " --

Like people elsewhere in East Asia, Vietnamese often express pride in their

adventurous culinary tastes.

 

A popular saying in the region goes: " We can eat anything with four feet

except the table. We can eat anything in the ocean except submarines. We can

eat anything in the sky except planes. " Some wild animals are killed for

their skins, to be stuffed or to make trinkets from tiger and bear teeth,

ivory or turtle shell. Others end up in illegal private zoos. But three

quarters die to be consumed, said Song. Wildlife meat, and the wines and

medicines made from it, have traditionally been believed to have healing and

tonic properties in many Asian cultures. " Many Vietnamese people believe

that consuming wildlife products promotes good physical health, often paying

exorbitant prices for products and meats derived from endangered species, "

said another WWF official.

 

Sulma Warne of wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC said he recently

learnt of a case where a group of men paid thousands of dollars to

commission a tiger, which was killed in Myanmar, dissected and smuggled in

parts to Vietnam. " It's a status symbol, " Warne said. " The fact that you can

get tiger meat shows you have money. It's illegal, it's difficult to get.

It's like caviar. " A recent survey by WWF and TRAFFIC found that nearly half

of Hanoi's residents had personally used wildlife products, a trend the

groups plan to tackle with a public awareness campaign being launched later

this month. In Ho Chi Minh City, a survey of 1,600 restaurants by the group

Wild Animal Rescue found 15 wild species on the menu, among them deer, snake

and turtle.

 

" Vietnam is getting richer, but people also believe in ancient medicine and

showing off their wealth and power by eating these endangered species, " said

Edwin Wiek of the Indonesia-based Borneo Orangutan Survival foundation.

" Vietnam is definitely a very big player in this market, unfortunately. It

is a consumer as much as a transfer point. " Wiek has long monitored the

trade, especially in primates, and recently returned two orangutans to

Indonesia from an illegal hotel zoo near Ho Chi Minh City that also kept 70

bears, a tiger, monkeys and exotic birds. " For some people, having a Ferrari

outside their front door is not enough, " said Wiek. " You have to have a

chimpanzee or an orangutan in your backyard as well. Then you're really the

man. "

 

-- Rainforest species --

 

Over the past decade, biologists have been stunned to find that Vietnam,

shut off for decades by war and politics, has rainforests far more

species-diverse than previously known. In 1992, researchers here discovered

the saola, the world's largest new mammal found in over half a century. The

forest-dwelling ox was not just a new species but also a new genus.

 

Since then a one-horned rhinoceros thought extinct in mainland Asia was

rediscovered and biologists found three new deer species, 63 vertebrates and

45 unknown fish, says the recently-published 'Vietnam: A Natural History'.

Yet scientists are racing against time to catalogue the new animals before

they are gone. Many of Vietnam's wild areas have become denuded habitats,

sometimes dubbed " empty forests. " More than 300 animal species have

disappeared and over 100 are threatened.

 

With virgin rainforests now reduced to a patchwork, fewer than 100 tigers,

100 wild elephants and 10 rhinos are believed to survive in the wild in

Vietnam, their gene pools already too small to ensure their survival here.

Vietnam banned hunting without a permit in 1975 and has signed several

treaties, including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered

Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Yet enforcement is often weak, Song said,

and the estimated profit of the illegal wildlife trade 30 times larger than

state spending to combat it. As long as demand grows, experts agree, the

illegal trade will grow and continue to threaten the biological heritage of

Vietnam and Southeast Asia. " Vietnam has become famous over the past 15

years for the discovery of new species, " said the WWF's Coull. " It could

become famous for their extinction. "

 

 

 

 

 

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