Chinese demand takes toll on wildlife in Burma (Myanmar)

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Link: http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0904-burma.html

 

*Chinese demand takes toll on wildlife in Burma (Myanmar)

Reuters

September 4, 2007*

 

If the market of Mong La is anything to go by, the remaining wild elephants,

tigers and bears in Myanmar's forests are being hunted down slowly and sold

to China.

 

Nestled in hills in a rebel-controlled enclave on the Chinese border, the

" Las Vegas in the jungle " casino town is clearly branching out from

narcotics and prostitution into the illegal wildlife business.

 

Besides row upon row of fruit, vegetables and cheap plastic sandals, the

market offers a grisly array of animal parts, as well as many live

specimens, to the hundreds of Chinese tourists who flock across the border

each day.

 

Bear paws and gall bladders, elephant tusks and chunks of hide, tiger and

leopard skins, as well as big cat teeth and deer horn are all openly on

display next to crudely welded cages of live macaques, cobras, Burmese star

tortoises and pangolins.

 

The live creatures, some of them on the IUCN Conservation Union's " Red List "

of critically endangered species, are destined for the cooking pots of

exotic animal restaurants in China's neighbouring Yunnan province, or

further afield.

 

Food stalls in the market openly advertise dishes of pangolin or black bear.

 

 

The body parts -- some of which will not be real, given the ease with which

a pig bladder can be passed off as that of a bear -- will either be ground

up for traditional medicine, worn as amulets or simply hung on the wall as

trophies.

 

Most of the specimens come from the former Burma's still vast tracts of

virgin forest, wildlife experts believe, although some will have come from

as far away as India to be trafficked into China by well-organised criminal

gangs.

 

" Burma is being raped in terms of its natural resources -- trees, plants and

animals. They've got to get a hold of the situation quickly before it

becomes a barren ground, " said Steven Galster, Bangkok-based director of the

Wildlife Alliance.

 

" There's a huge flow of illegal wildlife going into China, through whatever

porous border points there are. This is definitely one of them, mainly

because the Burmese government just doesn't have a handle on the situation. "

 

 

MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR TRADE

 

Myanmar signed up in 1997 to the Convention on International Trade in

Endangered Species (CITES), which places partial or total bans on sales of

the most threatened species, including bears and big cats.

 

Experts also say the junta that has run the country for the last 45 years

may not be as oblivious to wildlife protection as might be expected from its

reputation as an international pariah and ruthless crusher of political

dissent.

 

Illegal logging of Myanmar's famed teak forests is a major problem --

London-based environmental group Global Witness estimates that 1.5 million

tonnes of timber worth US$350 million was shipped illegally into China in

2005.

 

But in 2004, the junta did set aside a stretch of jungle the size of Vermont

in the isolated Hukawng Valley to become the world's largest tiger reserve.

 

However, in the Golden Triangle hinterlands of eastern Shan State, the junta

exercises little authority -- no more so than in Mong La, an autonomous

fiefdom run by an ethnic Wa-Chinese warlord and drug baron called Sai Lin.

 

With the exotic animal black market worth billions of dollars a year --

exceeded in value only by the illegal trade in arms and drugs, experts

believe -- it is little wonder the likes of Sai Lin are getting involved.

 

ARMED GANGS

 

The 100,000 yuan (US$13,250) price tag on a tiger skin stretched across the

wall of one Mong La shop shows what cross-border police efforts such as

Southeast Asia's Wildlife Enforcement Network, launched in 2005, are up

against.

 

" These gangs are very big and have members stretching from Indonesia and

Malaysia to Thailand and right up into China, " said Aroon Promphan, a

captain in the special wildlife crime division of the Thai police.

 

" They tend to be armed and there's still political influence in countries

like China and Myanmar. "

 

The Chinese government has stepped up efforts in recent years to stamp out

the domestic wildlife trade and educate people about the environmental

perils of stripping forests of their native flora and fauna.

 

However, the appetite for exotica remains and, partly as a result of the

crackdown, the trade has intensified beyond China's borders.

 

" The situation in China is still bad, although the awareness among Chinese

citizens and the government is much higher than it was before, " Galster

said.

 

" The problem is you've got 1.3 billion people and so it only takes a tiny

percent of that population to be eating an endangered species to have a

major impact. " (US$1=7.555 Yuan)

 

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