(Vietnam) Wildlife Trafficking

[Guest guest]

Vietnam Arrests Wildlife Traffickers

By Matt Steinglass

Hanoi

24 October 2006

 

Police in Vietnam have seized a large number of endangered animals being

transported to China for sale in restaurants. Wildlife trafficking is illegal in

Vietnam, but the government is having a hard time stopping the lucrative trade.

 

When police in central Vietnam stopped a bus this week heading north from Ho Chi

Minh City, they found bags and cages full of wild animals. The police detained

the owner of the bus and confiscated the animals.

 

Police administrator Tran Dinh Trung says it was the biggest haul of wildlife

ever in Quang Nam province.

 

Trung says the police seized over 344 kilograms of snakes, turtles, and monitor

lizards.

 

Barney Long of the World Wildlife Fund in Quang Nam says most of the animals

were healthy and would be taken care of.

 

He said, " Most of them are fine. The monitor lizards and the turtles all look

fine, and the turtles will probably go to Cuc Phuong National Park, where there

is a rescue center. "

 

The animals are part of an immense illegal trade that supplies endangered

species to restaurants in Vietnam and China, where they are considered

delicacies.

 

Long says the trade is the biggest threat to Southeast Asia's biodiversity.

 

" It is basically vacuuming up animals all the way down into Indonesia and

Malaysia and even further afield than that, and it is all coming up into

northern Vietnam and southern China, " he said.

 

Many of Vietnam's animal species are protected by legislation, but the laws are

not well enforced.

 

Diep Thanh Phong of the Quang Nam Forest Protection Department says the animals

were seized Monday only because the bus owner lacked proper documentation.

 

Phong says the law requires documents showing the animals' point of origin.

 

But forest rangers have no authority to stop vehicles unless they know there is

a violator on board, and so must depend on traffic police.

 

And, the WWF's Long says, fines are often too low to deter traffickers.

 

" Although the laws are very strong, often they're implemented but also

interpreted quite weakly, so the fines are not strong enough, " he said. " If they

are stopped every few months and given a few-million dong in fines, it is really

not a disincentive, because they are making thousands of dollars a month. "

 

The laws are also rarely enforced against restaurants in Vietnam, which openly

list protected species on their menus.

 

The global black market in wildlife is worth billions of dollars a year. Experts

say the trade has severely damaged Vietnam's environment, bringing some species

close to extinction.

 

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-10-24-voa20.cfm

======================================

Illegal wildlife trade takes heavy toll in Vietnam

by Frank Zeller

Agençe Presse-France

16 August 2006

 

Vietnam has a wealth of unusual animals, many of them only recently discovered

by science. But some experts warn that unless the illegal trade in these

creatures ends, Vietnam may become famous only for the species that have become

extinct.

 

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 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

locally and for export to China, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

 

" This clouded leopard could have earned the smugglers 70 million dong

(A$5,700), " 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.

 

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 per cent 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 organised

crime.

 

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. "

 

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. "

 

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/562