South China's taste for wildlife

[Guest guest]

South China’s taste for wildlife

 

 

Consuming endangered wildlife is illegal in China, but it continues on

a large scale in the country’s south. Walter Parham reports on a habit that

locals just cannot kick – even after the SARS crisis.

 

 

 

 

Author:Walter Parham

 

Date:02/08/2008

 

 

 

The destruction of south China’s wildlife habitats started about 1,000

years ago, and still continues today. This led to many animal extinctions

and severe reductions in wildlife populations, and has been compounded by

the use of wildlife for food and for ingredients in Traditional Chinese

Medicine (TCM).

 

One might imagine that the pressure on wildlife would have decreased

as levels of education and urban incomes have risen in the region. But the

greatest reduction in wildlife consumption was actually in 2003, and came as

a result of public fears about the risks of catching Severe Acute

Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) from wild animals. In late 2004, the demand for

civet cats decreased so much due to the fear of SARS that 141 farms released

4,000 of the animals into the wild.

Bird flu later added to this concern.

Many Chinese people believe that eating wildlife is a bad habit, and

some will even say it is barbaric, but the practice has persisted in China

for around 2,000 years. A 2003 poll taken in Guangdong province found that

half of the population had eaten wildlife, snake being named as the

favourite of 45% of those surveyed.

 

 

 

 

A caged masked palm civet for sale in a Guangzhou wild-animal food

market in 2006

(Photo courtesy of Animals Asia Foundation, Hong Kong)

 

With increased affluence in large south China cities such as Hong

Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, greater numbers of well-educated urban men

have been reported as travelling to other cities on the Chinese mainland to

enjoy feasts of endangered and protected wildlife species – in order to

flaunt their wealth. Feast menus typically include cobras and other

poisonous snakes, pangolins (a small, scaly animal) and civet cats.

 

 

The figures are staggering. Twenty tonnes of snakes and as many as

20,000 birds were eaten every day in Guangdong restaurants in 2001, reported

the South China Morning Post. One Guangzhou restaurant, “Chock Full O’

Snakes”, served 600 to 700 kilograms of snakes every day throughout January

2001 – the first month of the Year of the Snake. Some wildlife restaurants

in Guangzhou can seat as many as 1,000 people.

 

In 2001, China announced fines of 1,000 to 10,000 yuan for anyone

caught eating protected wildlife. But in 2004 Xinhua news agency reported

the State Forestry Administration as saying that the cobra population has

fallen 90% in the previous decade, while numbers of the common rat snake had

dropped 75%.

The scarcity of wildlife in Guangdong province, stemming from the high

demand for wild animals for food, has meant increasing imports of wildlife

from other southern provinces, as well as other Asian countries such as

Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Vietnam – and even some African

countries. These imports increase the pressure on wildlife in these

locations.

 

Smuggling has also become commonplace in nearby Hong Kong, due to the

high market value of many endangered or protected wildlife species in

mainland China. A look at some Hong Kong police reports highlights the

magnitude of the problem: in 2001, the Hong Kong authorities uncovered a

shipment of 2.7 tonnes of pangolin scales, a yield that would require the

scales of 5,000 to 6,000 pangolins. The next year, crates containing 600

cobras were smuggled into Hong Kong from Malaysia, but were intercepted by

the police by a dangerous, high-speed boat chase. And in 2005, a shipment of

1,800 skinned and vacuum-packed pangolins was discovered. The list goes on,

and these incidents only represent the tip of the iceberg of the wildlife

smuggling trade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pangolin

The 2003 SARS outbreak caused widespread concern in China about the

possible hazards of eating wild animals. The link between SARS and the

handling and eating of certain wildlife was proposed by medical researchers,

and the Chinese government closed or relocated a number of wildlife markets,

as well as closing many wildlife restaurants. At the height of the outbreak,

the Guangdong government banned the breeding, consumption and trading of

wildlife. But sales resumed shortly after the SARS crisis had passed.

Renewed efforts by the Guangdong health authorities in 2007 to confiscate

civet cats led to a haul of 15 civet cats and 22 kilograms of civet-cat

cutlets. Health authorities in the Guangdong city of Foshan recently banned

the eating of field mice, after vendors were found to have killed the mice

with poison before selling them to restaurants.

 

Although recent evidence suggests that wildlife consumption has

slowed, there is also reason to believe that smuggling continues. If

something on the scale of a SARS outbreak does not resurface, will the

public become increasingly complacent about eating wild animals again? And

will environmental education alter people’s eating habits and reduce

wildlife consumption? We can only hope, but I am not so certain.

http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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