(IN): NDTV Trailing illegal animal trafficking

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*Trailing illegal animal trafficking*

 

NDTV Correspondent

Friday, January 18, 2008 (New Delhi)

It's a lucrative trade that spans countries and continents, where animals

and birds are trafficked across borders through airplanes and cargo

carriers, using the same channels as legal importers.

 

But unlike those traders, who use legal channels with proper paper work,

those trafficking wildlife, falsify certificates, use multiple means of

transport via multiple routes. They even camouflage their live merchandise

by caging animals and birds inside boxes with hidden compartments, hence

mixing them with legal shipments.

 

It is estimated that 350 million animals and plants are traded every year in

a market, which is worth more than US$20 billion. More than a quarter of

this trade, well over $ 5 billion is illegal, making it second only to the

narcotics trade.

 

But while millions of dollars are spent worldwide to fight the drugs trade,

not even a fraction of that amount is spent to prevent the killing and

trapping of wild animals and birds.

 

Those involved in the trade are mostly highly organized cross-border

syndicates and include large supply chains, which ranges from tribals and

poachers, who trap or kill an animal, to the transporter who moves it to the

market.

 

There are three main trade routes in and out of India from Delhi to Nepal

and then onto Tibet and China.

 

From West Bengal across the porous border to Bangladesh and then on to the

Far East, from the mountains of Sikkim, Nagaland and Meghalaya to China.

Other than these routes, ports like the ones in Mumbai and airports like

Chennai and Hyderabad are also transit points for wildlife.

 

These trade routes are also used to smuggle other illegal goods like guns,

ammunition and narcotics especially in the North East where insurgency has

kept the trade in wildlife and wildlife products alive and funded the buying

of weapons and ammunition.

 

In the early nineties during the bodo land struggle in Assam nearly all

rhinos in the Manas National Park were poached to finance the war. And

aiding them were several forest guards for the money from a single rhino

horn was several times their annual salary.

 

''I don't think Indian wildlife has gone through a worse crisis than now. We

have the world's finest laws, but implementation is abysmal,'' said Bittu

Sahgal, Editor, *Sanctuary* Magazine.

 

Conservationists have been asking for a wildlife crime unit to be set up in

India for the last ten years, a demand that's finally been accepted and is

set to start by the end of January.

 

India's wild life, it seems may still have some hope.

 

 

--

United against elephant polo

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