The tusks of 600 elephants seized in Hong Kong in October 2012  (just 3 months ago)

Street Value is $3.4M in illegal African ivory destined for Traditional Chinese Medicine

[Source: ^http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/10/the-biggest-haul-of-ivory-tusk-in-hong-kong-customs-enforcement-history-in-a-single-operation/]

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Illegal Wildlife Trade

[World Wildlife Fund, 2012, ^http://worldwildlife.org/threats/illegal-wildlife-trade]

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Elephant cruelly butchered for Traditional Chinese ‘Medicine’ (read ‘quackery’)

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<<The world is dealing with an unprecedented spike in illegal wildlife trade, threatening to overturn decades of conservation gains. Ivory estimated to weigh more than 23 metric tons—a figure that represents 2,500 elephants—was seized in the 13 largest seizures of illegal ivory in 2011. Poaching threatens the last of our wild tigers that number as few as 3,200.

Wildlife crime is a big business. Run by dangerous international networks, wildlife and animal parts are trafficked much like illegal drugs and arms. By its very nature, it is almost impossible to obtain reliable figures for the value of illegal wildlife trade.  Experts at TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, estimate that it runs into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Some examples of illegal wildlife trade are well known, such as poaching of elephants for ivory and tigers for their skins and bones. However, countless other species are similarly overexploited, from marine turtles to timber trees. Not all wildlife trade is illegal. Wild plants and animals from tens of thousands of species are caught or harvested from the wild and then sold legitimately as food, pets, ornamental plants, leather, tourist ornaments and medicine. Wildlife trade escalates into a crisis when an increasing proportion is illegal and unsustainable—directly threatening the survival of many species in the wild.

Stamping out wildlife crime is a priority for WWF because it’s the largest direct threat to the future of many of the world’s most threatened species. It is second only to habitat destruction in overall threats against species survival.>>

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Traditional Chinese ‘Medicine’ driving wicked Slaughter

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The demand for elephant ivory is stronger than ever in mainland China and Thailand. Ivory is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to treat fevers, nosebleeds, convulsions, stroke and as an aphrodisiac.

But TCM doesn’t work.  It is quackery and witchcraft.  It is immoral because it involves using and prescribing wildlife parts and drives the illegal cruel slaughter of endangered wildlife and its trafficking.  TCM is wicked and backward. TCM needs to be internationaly banned just like cannibalism.

TCM:  ‘Timeless Wisdom for a Modern World”?

No, TCM has the same legitimacy as Cannibalism

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The following websites link to organisations pushing this TCM trade:

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Panaxea International, ^http://www.panaxea.com/

Eu Yan Sang ^http://www.euyansang.com/

Sydney Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, ^http://www.sitcm.edu.au/

Chinese Medicine Board of Australia  (Note: not a government body), ^http://www.chinesemedicineboard.gov.au/

Asante Academy of Chinese Medicine, ^http://asanteacademy.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/treating-cancer-with-chinese-medicine/

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Works better than TCM – guaranteed!

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Oct 2012:   Hong Kong seizes $3.4M in illegal African Ivory

[Source:  ‘Hong Kong seizes $3.4M in illegal African ivory’, by Associated Press (foreign), 20121020, The Guardian (Britain), ^http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10492150]

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<<Hong Kong customs officers have confiscated nearly 4 tons of ivory worth $3.4 million in their biggest ever seizure of endangered species products, authorities said on Saturday.

Acting on a tip from customs officials in neighboring Guangdong province in mainland China, Hong Kong officials found the ivory tusks and ornaments in two containers shipped from Tanzania and Kenya.

Officers on Tuesday found nearly 1,000 pieces of ivory tusks weighing more than 1,900 kg as well as 1.4 kg of ivory ornaments in a container from Tanzania. The ivory was hidden in bags of plastic scrap.

A day later, officers found 237 pieces of ivory tusks weighing about 1,900 kg in a shipment from Kenya.

Authorities in China have arrested seven people, including one from Hong Kong.  The ivory seizure tops one in 2011 worth $2.2 million.

“This is the biggest haul of ivory tusk in Hong Kong customs enforcement history in a single operation,” said Lam Tak-fai, head of Hong Kong’s Ports and Maritime Command.

Wildlife activists blame China’s growing presence in Africa for an unprecedented surge in poaching elephants for their tusks, most of which are believed to be smuggled to China and Thailand to make ivory ornaments.

Under Hong Kong law, anyone found guilty of trading in endangered species products can be faces up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $640,000.>>

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African savanna elephant and calf

(Loxodonta africana africana), Amboseli National Park, Kenya

Photo © Martin Harvey, World Wildlife Fund

^http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/species/species_pictures/moms/

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[Ed:  No!   Wildlife have existence rights just a humans.  Mammalian Wildlife are sentient beings just as humans – Read:  >The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness 2012 (2 pages,PDF, 27 kb). 

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Unlike humans, poached wildlife such as Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Bears and Tigers are increasingly approaching extinction as species.  Genocide of humans falls short of speciescide, which should be put in perspective.   

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Wildlife Parts need to be valued as Human Parts.  The Wildlife Parts Trade need to internationally attract the equivalent penalties as does the Human Parts Black Market by:  (1) those who commit the barbaric slaughter, (2) by those traffic in wildlife parts, and (3) by those who use wildlife parts.  Penalties need to be Life Imprisonment accordingly, and for corporations fines of up to US$1 million per animal and all corporate assets seized and the corporation wound up].

Poor Victim of Organ Gangs

[Source:  ^Bloomberg, 20111101]

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Jan 2013:    ‘Poachers busted with 779 Elephant Tusks’

[Source:  ‘Poachers Busted With Almost 800 Elephant Tusks’, by Andri Antoniades, TakePart (a social action website), 20130106, ^http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/01/06/blood-ivory-market-surges-activists-scramble-protect-elephants]

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779 elephant tusks uncovered in Hong Kong shipping containers in January 2013  (just 3 days ago)

The crime is escalating!

The tusks discovered in Hong Kong this week were presumably going to be turned into jewelry, knicknacks, and religious icons.

(Photo: SkyNews.com/YouTube Screengrab)

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<<Last month, TakePart reported on some revolutionary new tactics that will be implemented in order to hinder the proliferation of the very lucrative poaching industry. Those efforts can’t come fast enough; this week, another massive shipment of blood ivory was discovered in Hong Kong, the shipping port’s third discovery of illegal ivory in as many months.

According to Sky News, this week customs agents discovered 779 elephant tusks hidden in the false bottoms of shipping crates, marked as “archaeological stones”. Worth about $1.5 million, this massive shipment from Kenya represents at least 389 elephant deaths, but doesn’t even qualify as the largest the port has seen in recent months.

Two previous shipments recently discovered were actually substantially larger, with the biggest topping out at 4 tonnes of elephant tusks, worth about $3.4 million. That was just in November.

Hong Kong’s port is a popular through-way for the poaching trade because it serves as the hub for Asian markets, where the demand for ivory is at the world’s highest. The tusks are not only used to make jewelry, but trinkets and religious icons for the Chinese, Japanese and Thai markets.

The poaching industry has recently exceeded record levels with animals like Elephants, Tigers and Rhinos being slaughtered by the hundreds across continents. The kill-methods represent a level of cruelty that’s so barbaric it seems the stuff of fictional villains. Nonetheless, knowledge of the industry’s brutality does nothing to dampen sales.

Activists estimate about $10 billion a year is made from poaching’s international black market.

According to National Geographic, these recently uncovered shipments of elephant tusks just scratch the surface of the damage caused by poaching in the last 12 months.

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In 2012, 633 Rhinos were killed in South Africa (448 in 2011), their horns hacked off while they were still alive.

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“Hundreds of thousands” of African Grey Parrots were shipped off for sale. Less than 300 Sumatran Rhinos are left and only four Northern White Rhinos remain in captivity.

Every year, approximately 25,000 Elephants are killed for their tusks, accounting for their disappearance from the African and Asian plains.

The magazine reports that China’s recent stronghold in Africa is fueling a resurgence in the poaching industry. The country’s presence there, where it funds roads, dams, and municipal

buildings makes it a major player on the continent, giving it the power and access to easily extract the illegal goods and ship them home.

As activist Steve Boyes wrote in his National Geographic piece on the subject,

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“We are standing on the precipice of a mass extinction and Africa is just about to be lost forever.”

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In the meantime, the World Wildlife Fund, in partnership with Google, is trying launch the wide-scale implementation of drone technology, which will covertly monitor poachers’ activity

from hundreds of feet in the air. The secret system would alert ground crews of oncoming danger and send them in to areas where poachers are detected. Part of the initiative also

includes research into DNA tracing capabilities, allowing authorities to definitively trace poached animal parts.>>

Plains below Kilimanjaro

(Source:  Photo © Keven Smith,^http://www.naturepicoftheday.com/archive/2009-02-03)

(Click image to enlarge)

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Sep 2011:  ‘794 Elephant Tusks Intercepted’

[Source:  ‘794 elephant tusks intercepted’, 20110906, ^http://gbtimes.com/news/794-elephant-tusks-intercepted]

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TCM Witchdoctoring in Wildlife Parts

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<<Hong Kong officials intercepted 794 elephant tusks bound for mainland China from Malaysia.

The seizure comes in the wake of two other large shipments of African ivory being intercepted at the end of August by Malaysian officials.

Wildlife conservationalists have been struggling with the supply of ivory from illegal poachers in Africa paired with the demand in China.  Ivory is often used for ornaments or for medicinal purposes, particularly in mainland China.

According to the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Malaysia is becoming a first choice as a transit country for the trade of African ivory to China.

Although being lauded for the August discovery of illegal ivory shipments, critics wonder why Malaysian officials were not able to stop this two metric tonne shipment.>>

Africa’s Kilimanjaro and its native Elephants

(Source: Photo © Daryland and Sharna Balfour, ^http://www.awf.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Elephant-DarylandSharna_Balfour.jpg)

(Click image to enlarge)

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Dec 2012:    Rhino Horns increasingly targeted by TCM Poachers

[Source:  ‘Coveting Horns, Ruthless Smugglers’ Rings Put Rhinos in the Cross Hairs’, by Jeffrey Gettleman and Gaia Pianigiani (New York Times), 20121231, ^http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/world/africa/ruthless-smuggling-rings-put-rhinos-in-the-cross-hairs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]

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<<KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa — They definitely did not look like ordinary big-game hunters, the stream of slender young Thai women who showed up on the veld wearing tight bluejeans and sneakers.

But the rhinoceros carcasses kept piling up around them, and it was only after dozens of these hulking, relatively rare animals were dead and their precious horns sawed off that an extravagant scheme came to light.

The Thai women, it ends up, were not hunters at all. Many never even squeezed off a shot. Instead, they were prostitutes hired by a criminal syndicate based 6,000 miles away in Laos to exploit loopholes in big-game hunting rules and get its hands on as many rhino horns as possible — horns that are now worth more than gold.

“These girls had no idea what they were doing,” said Paul O’Sullivan, a private investigator in Johannesburg who helped crack the case. “They thought they were going on safari.”

The rhino horn rush has gotten so out of control that it has exploded into a worldwide criminal enterprise, drawing in a surreal cast of characters — not just Thai prostitutes, but also Irish gangsters, Vietnamese diplomats, Chinese scientists, veterinarians, copter pilots, antiques dealers and recently an American rodeo star looking for a quick buck who used Facebook to find some horns.

Driven by a common belief in Asia that ground-up rhino horns can cure cancer and other ills, the trade has also been embraced by criminal syndicates that normally traffic drugs and guns, but have branched into the underground animal parts business because it is seen as “low risk, high profit,” American officials say.

“Get caught smuggling a kilo of cocaine, you will receive a very significant prison sentence,” said Ed Grace, a deputy chief with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. But with a kilogram of rhino horn, he added, “you may only get a fine.”

The typical rhino horn is about two feet long and 10 pounds, much of it formed from the same substance as fingernails. Yet it can fetch nearly $30,000 a pound, more than crack cocaine, and conservationists worry that this “ridiculous price,” as one wildlife manager put it, could drive rhinos into extinction.

Gangs are so desperate for new sources of horn that criminals have even smashed into dozens of glass museum cases all across Europe to snatch them from exhibits.

“Astonishment and rage, that’s what we felt,” said Paolo Agnelli, a manager at the Florence Museum of Natural History, after three rhino horns were stolen last year, including a very rare one from 1824.

American federal agents recently staged a cross-country undercover rhino horn sting operation, called Operation Crash, “crash” being the term for a herd of rhinos.

Among the 12 people arrested: Wade Steffen, a champion steer wrestler from Texas, who pleaded guilty in May to trafficking dozens of horns that he found through hunters, estate sales and Facebook; and two members of an Irish gang — the same gang suspected of breaking into the museums in Europe.

In an e-mail to an undercover agent, an Irish gangster bragged: “Believe me WE NEVER LOSES A HORN TO CUSTOMS, we have so many contacts and people payed off now we can bring anything we want out of nearly any country into Europe.”

Corruption is a huge element, just like in the illegal ivory trade, in which rebel groups, government armies and threadbare hunters have been wiping out tens of thousands of elephants throughout Africa, selling the tusks to sophisticated criminal networks that move them across the globe with the help of corrupt officials.

Here in South Africa, home to the majority of the world’s last surviving 28,000 rhinos or so, the country is throwing just about everything it has to stop the slaughter — thousands of rangers, the national army, a new spy plane, even drones — but it is losing.

The number of rhinos poached in South Africa has soared in the past five years, from 13 killed in 2007 to more than 630 in 2012. The prehistoric, battleship-gray animals are often found on their knees, bleeding to death from a gaping stump on their face.

“Ever seen a dead rhino?” asked Philip Jonker, who works for a private security firm that has gone into wildlife protection. “It’s worse than going to a funeral.”

The only answer, some contend, is to legalize the trade, which would flood the market with rhino horns, lower the price and dissuade rhino poachers from risking their lives — or so the argument goes. Rhino horns regenerate, and the horns can be shaved down every few years and sold off without significantly hurting the animal.

One of most passionate advocates of this legalization movement is John Hume, a South African entrepreneur who now owns more than 800 rhinos, with names like Curly, Titan, Hillary and Pinocchio, and has amassed a 2,000-pound mountain of horn worth millions of dollars — if he is ever allowed to sell it.

“Why shouldn’t the person who breeds rhino get a reward?” he asks.

Every time Mr. Hume’s ranch hands trim down a few rhinos, they organize an armed escort to take the horns straight to a safe-deposit box in a bank because the same gangs that waylay armored bank trucks are now cruising around South Africa looking for Rhino horns.

But many wildlife groups say legalizing the rhino trade would be a disaster.

“The consuming power in my country is growing so rapidly that the supply would never meet the needs,” said Jeff He, spokesman for the Chinese branch of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “And besides, it’ll always be cheaper to poach an animal than raise it.”

Kruger National Park, an enormous wildlife refuge in South Africa’s northeast, is where many rhinos are being poached. The park lies on the border with Mozambique, a much poorer country still scarred from years of civil war. Park rangers say Mozambican gunmen are pouring through Kruger’s chain link fences, downing rhinos left and right.

Some sophisticated poaching rings use helicopters to spot the animals and veterinarians to dart them with tranquilizers. Others don women’s shoes, to leave misleading tracks. “At any one time, there are up to 10 groups operating inside the Kruger,” said Ken Maggs, a South African National Parks official. “These guys are trying new methods daily.”

Scientists say that maybe a million rhinos once roamed the earth, and for some reason, humans have been fascinated with the horn for ages. The ancient Persians thought rhino horn vessels could detect poisons. The Chinese thought rhino horn powder could reduce fevers. The Yemenis prized the horn for coming-of-age daggers, presented to teenage boys as a sign of manhood.

In Asia, faith in traditional cures runs strong, fueling demand as Asian economies grow, though there is no scientific proof that rhino horn can cure cancer.

In 2008, a Vietnamese diplomat in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, was caught on camera receiving Rhino horn — in the parking lot of the embassy. Around the same time, a Chinese company opened a secretive rhino breeding center in Hainan Province, reportedly to produce rhino-based medicine.

In the past 50 years, the overall rhino population has plummeted by more than 90 percent, despite an international ban on the trade in rhino parts since 1977.

But in South Africa, it is legal to hunt Rhinos, creating the loophole that the Thai prostitutes sauntered through. Hunters must agree to keep the horn set (rhinos have a large front and smaller back horn) as a trophy and not sell it, and hunters are allowed to kill only one White Rhino every 12 months. (Black rhinos are critically endangered and very few are hunted in South Africa.)

According to South African law enforcement officials, gang leaders in Thailand and Laos decided that to maximize the number of Rhinos they could kill, they would enlist Thai prostitutes who were already in South Africa with valid passports, which were used for the hunting permits. The women then tagged along on the hunts, often dressed in catchy pinks and blues, but somebody else — usually a professional hunter — pulled the trigger.

“I don’t know whose idea it was to use the ladies, but it was a damn good one,” said Mr. O’Sullivan, the private investigator.

None of the two dozen or so prostitutes involved have been prosecuted — the intent was to get the big fish. So Mr. O’Sullivan leaked a photograph of an enormous stockpile of ivory and rhino horns to one of the women, along with a message for her boss, a bespectacled Thai man named Chumlong Lemtongthai, that everything was for sale: “I wanted the big man himself to come here and negotiate.”

Mr. Lemtongthai did exactly that, and he was arrested soon after. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in November to 40 years.

“I do not want to see a situation where my grandchildren will only be able to see rhino in a picture,” said the judge, Prince Manyathi.>>

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Jan 2013:  Vietnamese caught smuggling Rhino Horn

[Source:  ‘Rhino Horn Trade: Thai Officials Catch Smuggler In Bangkok Airport’, 20130106, Huffington Post (America), ^http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/illegal-rhino-horn-trade-smuggling-thailand_n_2424428.html; ^http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/329675/rhino-horn-seized-in-bangkok-ho-chi-minh]

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Seized rhino horns are shown with alleged Vietnam smuggler Pham Quang Loc, 56,

arrested at Suvarnabhumi airport when he arrived from Ethiopia on his way to Vietnam

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<<BANGKOK — Thai authorities have seized more than $500,000 worth of rhino horn from passenger’s luggage at a Bangkok airport.

Thai Customs officer Khanit Isdul said Sunday that officials acting on a tip-off found four rhino horns in the passenger’s luggage at Suvarnabhumi International Airport.  (‘They were allegedly hidden inside a souvenir hippo carried by Mr Loc.)

Officials arrested Phan Quangloc, a 56-year-old Vietnamese passenger who arrived with the case from Ethiopia on Sunday. He is expected to face a jail term in Thailand if convicted of smuggling.  Officials estimated the value of the confiscated horns, cut into 6 sections, at 18 million baht ($586,000).

Asia is the main market for smuggled rhino horn, as some people believe it can cure diseases.

Trade in rhino parts is banned under international agreements.>>

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Nov 2011:   366 Rhinos slaughtered for TCM since January

[Source:  ‘Record rhino horn haul’, 20111116, by Candice Bailey and Shaun Smillie, IOL News, (from Reuters) ^http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/record-rhino-horn-haul-1.1179722#.UOxvi3fcDNE]

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Lam Tak-fai, acting head of (Hong Kong) Ports and Maritime Command, arranges Rhino horns,

part of a shipment of 33 horns, ivory chopsticks and bracelets seized by the Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department,

during a news conference in Hong Kong.

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<<It could just be a new method used by syndicates to smuggle Rhino horn out of the country: bulk consignments, hidden in containers and sent by sea. But Rhino syndicates are not just using new smuggling routes, poachers also appear to be changing their tactics to target more animals.

On Monday, customs officials in Hong Kong discovered 33 Rhino horns that had been hidden in a container on a ship that had left Cape Town. They also seized 758 ivory chopsticks and 127 ivory bracelets, which they estimated was worth HK$ 17.4 million (R18.17m).

Customs officers had apparently selected the container “acting on risk assessment”. It was marked as carrying 63 packages of scrap plastic. Using X-ray equipment, they found the contraband hidden inside a package of plastic scrap that had been placed at the rear of the container. The 33 horns, which weighed 86kg, constitute nearly a tenth of the Rhinos poached in SA this year.

Dr Richard Thomas, the communications co-ordinator for Traffic International, said such a large seizure of Rhino horns was unusual. “Usually there are reports of one or two horns being smuggled out through the airports, I can’t think of such a shipment before,” he said.

Thomas said the Cape Town to Hong Kong sea route was usually used by perlemoen smugglers, and that Rhino horn syndicates might be using the same network.

What he suspected was that from Hong Kong the horn might be smuggled overland through China on to Vietnam, with its large market for rhino horn. There is also an active ivory-smuggling route between the two Far East countries. Two weeks ago, Vietnamese authorities seized a ton of ivory that had come from China.

South African Revenue Service spokesman Adrian Lackay said they had received news of the confiscation and had been in touch with the Hong Kong authorities.

“We will assist the foreign agencies with a local investigation if needed, because the goods came from South Africa,” he said.

Since January, 366 Rhinos have been killed across the country. Of those, the majority of the killings have been in the Kruger National Park, where 209 Rhinos were slain.

To date, 199 poachers have been arrested since January – compared to 165 arrested for last year. Thai nationals Chumlong Lemtongthai and Punpitak Chunchom are currently in court for exporting Rhino horn.

Lemtongthai, the syndicate’s alleged kingpin, used Thai prostitutes and strippers as bogus Rhino hunters. He would allegedly obtain legal trophy permits to shoot the Rhinos.

SANParks CEO Dr David Mabunda said that despite the higher number of Rhino killings this year, the number of incidents was declining.  The reason was a change in modus operandi by the poachers. They were still using AK-47s and other heavy-calibre weapons and hacking off the horns. But poachers were attacking in larger groups than before, sometimes up to 16 armed members. Mabunda said the source of the Rhino horn in the container came from several parks: private and state owned. The bust showed the urgency for the DNA profiling of the Rhino, currently being done by the University of Pretoria.

It would tell where the Rhino had been killed, and once a horn could be linked to a carcass, a poacher could be charged with killing an endangered species. Killing an endangered species carries a heavier sentence than possession of Rhino horn.

Mabunda said they continued to work with the police and the SA National Defence Force, and at any time, there were between eight and 10 anti-poaching groups operating in the Kruger National Park.

The strengthening of the park’s law enforcement meant that crime was being displaced to other parts of the country. The hardest hit areas were Limpopo, Mpumalanga and rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal.>>

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Jan 2013:   633 Rhinos slaughtered in 2012,  just in South Africa

[Source:  ‘Report will advise on legal trade in rhino horn’, 20130108, by Sue Blaine, Business Day, National/Science & Environment (South Africa), ^http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/science/2013/01/08/report-will-advise-on-legal-trade-in-rhino-horn]

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<<FORMER home affairs director-general Mavuso Msimang, who has been set the task of researching ways of saving the rhino from poaching, is expected to report in the first quarter of this year. His report will also advise on whether South Africa should apply to trade in rhino horn under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).

The trade issue has polarised many South Africans who have the rhino’s best interests at heart. Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa will have the unenviable task of deciding whether South Africa should apply to trade in rhino horn.

Although South Africa will not be making any proposal on trade until 2016’s Cites meeting, there will be discussion on Kenya’s recent proposal to the international body that a trophy-hunting moratorium be placed on South African white rhinos, says Southern African Development Community rhino management group chairman Mike Knight.

The proposal will be considered at the Cites Conference of Parties in Bangkok in March. If approved, the moratorium will be instituted until 2019, says Lion Aid founder Pieter Kat.

Mr Kat says Kenya argues that despite progress made by South Africa in instituting more demanding control measures, rhino poaching continues to rise.

Controls include the development of an electronic database for licence applications, mandatory registration of existing rhino horn stockpiles, bilateral treaties to improve law enforcement, increasing penalties and improving the gathering of intelligence.

“Kenya is of the opinion that such poaching has resonated across borders and that the recent upsurge in rhinos poached in Kenya is directly linked to a problem made in South Africa,” Mr Kat says.

Mr Knight says that integral to the Kenyan proposal is that countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, and countries where rhino horn is sought after such as China and Vietnam, should respond to its proposal.

It is agreed that South Africa is not winning the war on rhino poaching. The country lost a record 633 rhinos between January 1 and December 19 last year. The previous record, for 2011, was 448. Already two rhinos have been slain in the first week of 2013.

Arrests have increased and sentences for the convicted are harsher. South Africa also signed a long-awaited memorandum of understanding with Vietnam in mid-December. The agreement aims to curb rhino poaching.

South Africa is home to more than 80% of the global population, and scientists have warned that if poaching increases at the same rate as it did between 2009 and 2011, when the tally jumped from 122 to 448, just more than a threefold increase, the species will be extinct by mid-century. It could go into decline by 2016.

Conservationists see Vietnam as key to curbing the poaching that feeds the illegal horn trade. The country, a known destination for much of the illegal rhino horn poached in South Africa, posted the highest wildlife crime score in the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature’s 2012 Wildlife Crime Scorecard report.

Rhino horn, prized in Vietnam as a “pick-me-up”, cancer cure and even an aphrodisiac, fetches about $60,000/kg in the Southeast Asian country.

The agreement that Ms Molewa and Vietnamese Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Cao Duc Phat signed last month refers only in general terms to addressing illegal wildlife smuggling.

However, there were “clear indications” that rhino horn trafficking would be “top of the new agenda on co-operation between the two nations”, WWF-SA said immediately after the memorandum was signed.

Mr Knight says it is likely South Africa will turn more to technology to help it fight rhino poachers, with the possible use of “unmanned aerial vehicles”, or “drones”.>>

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Rhino Conservation

[Source: ‘Rhino Conservation’, World Wildlife Fund (South Africa), ^http://www.wwf.org.za/act_now/rhino_conservation/]

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Rhinoceros de-horned to save it from TCM poaching

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WWF urges South Africans to be proud of their Rhino heritage on World Rhino Day (22 September).

More than 75% of all the world’s Rhino today are found in South Africa.

Rhinos have ranged far and wide across Africa and formed a magnificent part of our cultural and natural heritage for thousands of years. Long before becoming part of the iconic Big Five, rhinos were revered by African royalty as epitomised by the Golden Rhino buried with the King of Mapungubwe 800 years ago. South Africans are rightly proud of their rhino history and the critical role they played in the remarkable recovery of white rhino numbers over the last century. Today three out of every four rhinos alive are found in this one country.

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Yet, rhino deaths from poaching continue to rise.  As of 16 October 2012, 455 rhinos have been illegally killed for their horns this year.

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Rhino numbers continue to grow as more are born than are dying – even when poaching mortalities are taken into account. However, we are coming ever closer to the danger zone where populations start to decline.  WWF urges all South Africans to play a part in rhino protection at this pivotal point in their future.  Report threats to rhinos or any signs of suspicious behaviour on the Department of Environmental Affairs Rhino Hotline.

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What does WWF do to help rhinos?

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On Rhino Day 2012, WWF-SA launched its new National programme to strengthen and support rhino conservation efforts in South Africa in response to the dramatic increase in cases of rhino poaching. Conservation activities will be based around a new five-point strategic framework to combat the threats to rhinos.

The five key areas are:

1. Continuing the protection of key rhino populations and creating new resilient populations in South Africa through our Black Rhino Range Expansion Project (BRREP)
2. Developing buffers in local communities around rhinos as the first critical line of defence
3. Supporting and tightening proactive law enforcement efforts to break illegal trade chains
4. Improving co-operation between South Africa and consumer countries
5. Understanding rhino horn trade in end-user markets and influencing demand

We are working with our colleagues in Vietnam to develop tactics to shift new markets and new uses leading to increased demand for rhino horn.

During the first week of October, BRREP translocated a further thirteen black rhino from Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife reserves to another property in northern KwaZulu-Natal.>>

Black Rhino

(Photo byJeff McNeely)

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“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.”

~ Susan Sontag (1933-2004)

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Further Reading:

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[1]   World Rhino Day, 22 September , ^http://www.worldrhinoday.org/

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[2]   Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, ^http://www.cites.org/

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[3]   TRAFFIC: The Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, World Wildlife Fund, ^http://worldwildlife.org/initiatives/traffic-the-wildlife-trade-monitoring-network

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[4]   TRAFFIC: The Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, ^http://www.traffic.org/

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[5]   SOS Elephants, ^http://www.soselephants.org/

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[6]   Cambridge Declaration On Consciousness, Francis Crick Memorial Conference, (Cambridge, England, 20120707, ^http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

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[7]   African Wildlife Foundation, ^http://www.awf.org/

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<<Illegal and/or unsustainable wildlife trade can cause a species to reach a point where its survival hangs in the balance.  In fact, illegal wildlife trade is one of the main reasons that many species are endangered.

For example, Rhino poaching to fuel to demand for the illegal Rhino horn trade reached an all-time high in 2011, with 448 Rhinos poached in South Africa alone. This could unravel years of conservation success with African Rhinos.>>

[Source:  World Wildlife Fund, ^http://worldwildlife.org/initiatives/traffic-the-wildlife-trade-monitoring-network]

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An emaciated Tiger in a Vietnamese farm cage awaits slaughter for TCM Tiger Parts

A mascot of an evil, barbaric and low-life society

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Vietnam is the most backward country for the illegal wildlife trade according to the latest wildlife report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Despite the growing middle class of Vietnam, the cultural practice of wildlife witchcraft quackery persists.  It is this new wealth that is enabling more Vietnamese to drive the slaughter of wlidlife such as Rhinos, Elephants and Tigers for their body parts.  The worse ‘demand countries’ for wildlife parts according to the WWF are Vietnam, China and Thailand.

The demand in wildlife parts is mainly driven from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which is an ancient backward cult in witchcraft quackery.  The TCM witchdoctors prey on superstitious simpletons who think drinking tiger bone wine will cure chronic ailments.  The TCM Barbaric Cult is a global chronic ailment in superstitious barbarism that is driving sadistic persecution of precious endangered wildlife.  TCM is no different to the Khmer Rouge, except the TCM Barbaric Cult targets wildlife instead of people.

They evangelise TCM cures anything from fatigue, stroke, cancer, back pain, migraine and low libido, which is all misleading lies.  It has its own quack terms such as ‘Yin Deficiency’,  ‘Yang Deficiency’, ‘Qi Stagnation’.  TCM dimwits certainly have ‘deficiency’ alright in the intelligence department.  Whatever the hocus-pocus names, TCM is backward, barbaric, sadistic, cruel, illegal, and doesn’t bloody well work anyway.  Only sad simpletons would spend a cent on quackery.  Those who traffick in wildlife parts deserve the same fate as the wildlife.

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TCM relies on the illegal black market in wildlife parts trafficking.  It is overdue for the backward practices of TCM to be outlawed globally.

 

A TCM practitioner plying her trade in Yin/Yang Bollocks

 

The following articles highlight the problem of the increasing illegal trade in wildlife parts for Traditional Chinese Medicine.  When one visits the cities of these countries and see the every inctreasing shining skyline, one can be mistaken for believing one is entering a modern civilisation.

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‘Vietnam tops wildlife crimes table’

[Source:  ‘Vietnam tops wildlife crimes table’,  by Kevin Heath, 20120723, ^http://wildlifenews.co.uk/2012/vietnam-tops-wildlife-crimes-table/]

Cache of wildlife parts in Vietnam – the entrails of a barbaric cult

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One the eve of the opening of the latest CITES session the wildlife group WWF has released a report that shows Vietnam is the worse country for the illegal wildlife trade. In the traffic light system used by the WWF to rank countries Vietnam scored a red in trade in rhino and tigers with a yellow card for elephants.

The new report called Wildlife Crime Scorecard looked at 23 range nations as well as transit countries and the final consumer countries of parts for three species – elephant, rhino and tiger.   Read Report:   ^http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_wildlife_crime_scorecard_report.pdf   [>Read Report (3MB, pdf)]

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“It is time for Vietnam to face the fact that its illegal consumption of rhino horn is driving the widespread poaching of endangered Rhinos in Africa, and that it must crack down on the illegal rhino horn trade. Viet Nam should review its penalties and immediately curtail retail markets, including Internet advertising for horn,” said Elisabeth McLellan, Global Species Programme manager at WWF.

A number of Vietnamese people have been arrested over recent years in South Africa for being involved in rhino smuggling. Even some Vietnamese diplomats have been caught involved in the trade.

China is given a yellow card for its involvement in the elephant ivory trade. The country has been highlighted as having inadequate management of its legal ivory market and this offers a conduit for illegally poached ivory to find a legitimate market.

Tusks of Elephants savagedly butchered for TCM, their tusks chainsawed off while still alive.  

This is a TCM stockpile of tusks intercepted in a shipping container in Malaysia

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Skulls of Cambodians savagedly butchered by the Khmer Rouge 

This is a stockpile of human skulls in the Tuolsleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh

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The WWF reports calls on the Chinese government to dramatically improve its enforcement of the ivory market.  It also calls on the government to remind its workers involved in major projects in Africa that anyone caught importing illegal wildlife products into China would be prosecuted, and if convicted, severely penalized.

While China got a yellow card for the ivory trade Thailand scored a red due to a legal loop-hole that makes it easy for illegally poached ivory to enter the luxury goods market.

“In Thailand, illegal African ivory is being openly sold in up-scale boutiques that cater to unsuspecting tourists. Governments will be taking up this troubling issue this week. So far Thailand has not responded adequately to concerns and, with the amount of ivory of uncertain origin in circulation, the only credible option at this stage is a ban on ivory trade,” McLellan said.

There is good news in the report as well. The WWF commends the countries from central Africa who recently signed a multinational agreement to tackle poaching.

“Although most Central African countries receive yellow or red scores for elephants, there are some encouraging signals. Last month Gabon burned its entire ivory stockpile, to ensure that no tusks would leak into illegal trade, and President Ali Bongo committed to both increasing protections in the country’s parks and to ensuring that those committing wildlife crimes are prosecuted and sent to prison.”    said WWF Global Species Programme manager Wendy Elliott.

The brightest spot of the report though goes to Nepal which last year, 2011, saw no losses to its rhino population due to improvements to anti-poaching and other law enforcement efforts.

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‘Vietnam gets failing grade in WWF’s illegal wildlife trade report card‘

[Source: ‘Vietnam gets failing grade in WWF’s illegal wildlife trade report card’, by Wynne Parry, LiveScienceSun, 20120722, ^http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/vietnam-gets-failing-grade-in-wwfs-illegal-wildlife-trade-report-card]

.Sumatran Rhino  (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)

Members of the species once inhabited rainforests, swamps and cloud forests in India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China.

In historical times they lived in southwest China, particularly in Sichuan.

But with TCM barbarism they have become persecuted and are now critically endangered,

with only six substantial populations in the wild: four on Sumatra, one on Borneo, and one in the Malay Peninsula.

(Photo: Bill Konstant/International Rhino Foundation)

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Rhinoceroses are poached for their horns that are then sold on the global black market to collectors and for medicinal purposes.

A conservation group, the World Wildlife Fund, has put together a report card ranking 23 nations’ compliance with an international treaty regulating the trade in wild animals.  The report card focuses on three species sought after on the international black market: elephants, tigers and rhinoceroses, and evaluates how well certain countries have held up their commitments as part of the treaty.

“These are just three species, and they are probably the three most talked about, so they are a kind of bellwether for wider problems,” said Colman O Criodain, wildlife trade specialist with the WWF.

The report looks at countries where these animals originate and must travel through, as well as the countries where they arrive for sale. There were some bright spots: India and Nepal received green marks for all three species, showing they had made progress toward complying with the treaty and enforcing policies to prevent the illegal trade.

Many countries, however, received red marks indicating they are failing to uphold their commitments under the treaty.

There have already been consequences for animals. In the last decade, the western black rhino went extinct and the Indochinese Javan rhinoceros was eradicated from Vietnam. Poaching played a crucial role, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Other subspecies of these large, plant-eating creatures are driven by demand for their horns. In Vietnam, demand for rhino horn has boomed thanks to rumors it has healing and aphrodisiac properties, O Criodain said.

For Asians seeking aphrodisiacs?

Viagra is proven to work, but TCM is bollocks

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The report calls out Vietnam, which WWF says is the top destination for South African rhino horn, saying Vietnam’s penalties for participating in the illegal trade are weak and legal measures are insufficient to curtail illegal trade on the Internet. “Despite numerous seizures elsewhere implicating (Viet Nam), there has been no recorded seizure of rhino horn in the country since 2008,” reads a statement issued by WWF.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a treaty signed by 175 nations, makes nearly all commercial trade in rhino horns, elephant ivory, tiger parts and other species threatened with extinction illegal. In addition, signatories committed to regulating trade within their borders.

WWF ranked nations’ compliance with the treaty — evaluating whether or not the nation had adopted policies that supported the treaty — and the nations’ enforcement of those policies.

A nation could have good laws on the books but fail to enforce them. For instance, China has laws tightly controlling the sale of elephant ivory. However, it does not have a strong record of enforcing them, O Criodain said.

The report card is not comprehensive; rather it is a snapshot that focuses on certain countries that face the highest levels of illegal trade in these three species. Countries from which a particular species has been eradicated, such as Central Africa which has lost all of its rhinos, escaped an evaluation, O’Criodain noted.

The evaluation is based on government announcements reported in media, CITES documentation and information collected by Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network that is a joint program of the WWF and IUCN.

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Bile being extracted from a bear’s gall bladder – while it is conscious

(ENV photo)

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In Vietnam, Ha Long Bear Bile Farms continue to flout the law by selling bile to Korean tourists @ $30 per cc.

Vietnam’s bears are being pushed to the edge of extinction according to ENV, primarily due to the illegal hunting and trade to support the demand for bear bile used as a traditional form of medicine (TCM). Hundreds of Asian tourists including many Koreans, visit per week, watch the extraction process, drink bear gall wine and pay $30 per CC for take-away bile. The plight of these bears is truly pitiful.

Most of the approximately 3,500 bears in Vietnamese farms are thought to have been caught as cubs in the wild and then raised for the painful extraction of bile from their gall bladders.

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ENV produced this powerful public service announcement to persuade people not to drink bear bile wine.

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[Source: ‘Spotlight on conservation: Education for Nature-Vietnam’, by Wild Open Eye, 20120301,  ^http://wildopeneye.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/spotlight-on-conservation-education-for-nature-vietnam/]

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‘Vietnam, Laos and Mozambique do least to halt trade in animal parts: WWF’

[Source: ‘Vietnam, Laos and Mozambique do least to halt trade in animal parts: WWF’, by Reuters, 20120723, ^http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-23/flora-fauna/32803700_1_elephant-ivory-animal-parts-tiger-parts]

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‘Vietnam, Laos and Mozambique are the countries that do the least to crack down on an illegal trade in animal parts that is threatening the survival of elephants, rhinos and tigers, the WWF conservation group said on Monday.

In its ‘Wildlife Crime Scorecard’ report, it said 23 countries surveyed mostly in Africa and Asia, the main sources and destinations of animal parts, could all do more to enforce laws banning a trade that WWF said was increasingly run by international crime syndicates.’

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‘Vietnam proposes legalizing use of tiger parts in traditional medicines’

[Source:  ‘Vietnam proposes legalizing use of tiger parts in traditional medicines’, by Occupy For Animals, ^http://www.occupyforanimals.org/vietnam-proposes-legalising-use-of-tiger-parts-in-traditional-medicines-2012.html]

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‘Vietnam has proposed a move that activists allege would boost tiger poaching across the world. The country has proposed legalising the use of parts of captive bred tigers that die of natural causes in traditional medicines. If approved, this is likely to spur demand for body parts of the big cat in the international market and hit tiger conservation efforts currently underway. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Vietnam sent the proposal to the prime minister of the country in March this year.

The disclosure has taken the international community, which is currently discussing a coordinated strategy for recovering global tiger population in New Delhi, by shock. The proposal was brought to the notice of the tiger range countries by non-profits when they were discussing the measures to eliminate the demand for tiger parts during the 1st Stocktaking Meeting of the Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP) between May 15 and May 17. The conference was organised by National Tiger Conservation Authority of India along with the Global Tiger Forum, Global Tiger Initiative and the World Bank to take stock of the GTRP, which was adopted in 2010 and aims at doubling the global wild tiger population by 2022. Currently, around 3,200 wild tigers thrive in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Vietnam, however, did not mention the MARD proposal in its draft GTRP implementation report, a document each of the tiger range countries submitted to explain the actions taken by their governments for tiger conservation. The proposal is part of an investigation report prepared by the MARD on the wild and captive-bred tigers in Vietnam. Around 112 tigers are kept in breeding farms in Vietnam. “According to Vietnam’s law and International Convention, any activity of trading or using tigers and tiger products is prohibited. Tiger breeding facilities therefore can gain no profit. Moreover, because of the regulations against tiger trading, these facilities don’t have specific breeding purposes,” says the report. It further states that “dead tigers (from captive facilities) can be used to make specimens and traditional medicine on a pilot basis.”

But conservationists are not pleased. “This is in contradiction of the spirit of UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and GTRP. We want to give a clear message to Vietnam that if it goes ahead with the plan, we might have to take action against it in whatever capacity we can,” says Keshav Varma, programme director of the Global Tiger Initiative of the World Bank. The tiger range countries, including Vietnam, are signatories to CITES that prohibits the trade in tiger parts and derivatives, including domestic trade.

When asked, the representative of Vietnam’s ministry of natural resource and environment said the proposal came from a different ministry and he could not say much about it. He, however, hoped that the proposal would not be approved by their prime minister. “We are appalled that a few countries promise something else on international platforms while their domestic policies imply something else. If they allow trade of dead tigers kept in captivity, many tigers will be killed in the wild and their parts will be sold under the wrap of this scheme,” says Debbie Banks of UK-based non-profit, Environmental Investigation Agency.

So when you visit your Ying Yang Traditional Chinese Medicine Quack,

remember this tiger suffered for your healing cult.

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Is China above board?

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In the meeting apprehensions were also expressed regarding China’s domestic policies on captive tiger breeding and trade. For long tiger bones have been used in traditional medicines and wines in China. This had made the country principal destination for tiger parts from all over the world. In 1993, China prohibited the use, manufacture, sale, import and export of tiger bone products and products labelled as containing tiger bones.

However, in 2007, the State Forestry Administration (SFA), of China issued guidelines for the registration, labelling and sale of tiger and leopard skins of “legal origin.” “This seems to contradict China’s claim that trade in tiger parts is banned in the country. We have consistently requested clarification from China over just how many skins have been registered, how many have been sold under this policy, how many have come from captive bred sources, how many are reportedly from the wild and how legality has been verified. They have never responded,” says Banks.

China has also failed to meet the CITES resolution that it would take “measures to restrict the captive population to a level supportive only to conserving wild tigers.” The captive tigers in China have reportedly increased from 6,000 in 2010 to 9,000 now. There are allegations that the captive farms stockpiles the tiger bones and other parts of dead tigers. There is no transparency from China on where these stockpiles end up. “The issue of whether stockpiling of tiger bones in the captive farms in China is for research or for commercial use needs further clarification and is a serious cause of concern. We urge that China should follow the CITES resolution of keeping the captive bred tiger population restricted to support wild population in letter and spirit,” says Rajesh Gopal, member secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority.

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‘Thirst is building for tiger bone wine’

[Source:  Thirst is building for tiger bone wine’, by Yang Wanli (China Daily), 20100301, ^http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/metro/2010-03/01/content_9516414.htm]

Roaring demand for tiger bone tonic wine during the Year of the Tiger has delighted those taking part in the underground industry but sent chills through conservationists.

Despite a national prohibition on dealing in tiger body parts, online trade and tiger farms are flourishing, leading opponents to call for additional protection of the endangered species.

“In Western countries, people believe in Western medicine but there has seldom been as much enthusiasm for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as there is now, especially those made from animals,” said Ge Rui, Asian Regional Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

She said tiger farms are now a major threat to the species. While the farms are tolerated, the State Forest Ministry issued a notice at the end of last year stating that tiger bodies from the farms should be sealed for safekeeping.

“The government has made a great deal of effort to curb the illegal trade in rare and endangered species in recent years,” Ge said. “But their work is mainly focused on cross-border trade. The government allows the operation of tiger farms.”

According to statistics from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, there are now about 3,200 wild tigers worldwide.

In China, only about 20 tigers are thought to be left in the wild.

“The existence of tiger farms and increasing illegal trade in tiger products is seriously threatening this precious species,” she said. “In the Year of the Tiger, we should be doing more.”

Chinese animal rights groups recently launched an online campaign pushing for more protection of wild animals.

Despite the concern, consumers are still eager to get their hands on the illegal tonic wine.

“Tiger bone tonic wine will surely be popular this year,” said a seller from the Beijing Xinghuo Company.

“Nothing could be better than sending it to your relatives or leaders during the Year of the Tiger, both for good wishes and to keep them healthy.”

The company sells a wide range of wines, including a tiger bone tonic wine.

A 500 ml bottle of tiger bone wine, made in Heilongjiang province, sells for 1,380 yuan.

Tiger Wine – extracted from Tigers

It may as well be the cerebral fluid of Cambodians butchered at the hand of the Khmer Rouge

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Human Cerebrospinal fluid

Not as marketable in test tubes, but then TCM Cultists haven’t got around to bottling and branding this yet

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However, a bottle of tiger bone wine, said to be from Tongrentang, the place that supplied medicine to the royal pharmacy during the Qing Dynasty for 188 years, is even more expensive. Such wine, made in 1990s, sells for around 25,000 yuan.

The wine, which is believed to have medicinal properties, should improve with age, so the older the bottle, the higher the price. Those produced in the 1980s can sell for 60,000 yuan for 323 ml.

“Real tiger bone tonic wine is very popular in the market now,” said Sjkexiao, a 20-year old man who was looking to sell two bottles online that he claimed was tiger bone wine made in Tongrentang in 1984.

He said tiger bone tonic wine had been increasing in price in recent years.

Tigers have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. Tiger bone tonic wine is used in the treatment of arthritis and rheumatism.

China joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1981. It imposed a ban on the harvesting of tiger bones and outlawed all trade in tiger body parts in 1993.

As a result, tiger bone remedies were removed from TCM dictionaries.

“Medicines with parts from rare animals are not allowed to be sold now,” said a staff member, surnamed Zhang, at a Cachet pharmacy.

She suggested another medicinal wine, named Hongmao Medical Wine, that was priced at 250 yuan and which claimed to contain leopard bones.

“Money cannot buy a genuine bottle of tiger bone wine because of its scarcity,” she said. “You can never find such medicine in the stores now. Wine containing real tiger bones is really more effective than others.”

However, doctors were quick to question the medicinal value of tiger bone tonic.

“It is the same as other medicinal wines,” said Yue Debo, a doctor with more than 20 years’ experience in the department of orthopedics at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital. “It doesn’t have any miraculous effect.”

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Comment:  by Willson    20111230:

“This is why I will never allow any of my companies or affiliates to do business with the Chinese. The Chinese are unworthy of respect and therefore unworthy of becoming a trade partner. The trade in tiger bone wine is not an underground industry. It is a mainstream industry condoned by the Chinese government. My companies will never sell technology to the Chinese so long as this and other wildlife is threatened with government sanctioning.”

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Comment:  by  Dan    2011-12-30 06:37

“China is shameful!“

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‘India lucrative target for illegal wildlife trade’

[Source:  ‘India lucrative target for illegal wildlife trade’, 20120628, Zee News,^http://zeenews.india.com/news/eco-news/india-lucrative-target-for-illegal-wildlife-trade_784409.html]

Abject Fear for Reason

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India remains a “lucrative target” in the USD 20 billion illegal trade of wildlife articles per year, an official document says.

“The most serious and immediate risk to many species is poaching for wildlife trade. …South Asian countries account for 13 to 15 per cent of the world’s biodiversity and so remain a lucrative target of the trade,” says the report prepared by the Environment Ministry.

Wild animals are killed for the flourishing illegal international trade in their skins, bones, flesh, fur, used for decoration, clothing, medicine, and unconventional exotic food, says the Environmental and Social Framework Document for “Strengthening Regional Cooperation in Wildlife Protection in Asia”.

Victims of the trade include the iconic tiger and elephant, the snow leopard, the common leopard, the one-horn rhino, pangolin, brown bear, several species of deer and reptiles, seahorses, star tortoises, butterflies, peacocks, hornbills, parrots, parakeets and birds of prey, and corals, it says.

Pangolines poached for TCM

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“The primary market for many of these products is outside South Asia, often in East Asia for items of presumed pharmacological utility,” says the document is prepared for financial assistance from the World Bank under regional International Development Association (IDA) window.

Noting that the wildlife trade is “big business”, it said due to the clandestine nature of the enterprise, reliable estimates of the composition, volume and value of the trade remain elusive.

“The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) suggests that the global value of the illegal wildlife related trade exceeds USD 20 billion per year and probably ranks third after narcotics and the illegal weapons trade,” it said.

The report says that poaching techniques are “extremely gruesome”.

“The more egregious methods include skinning or dehorning live animals, and transportation of live creatures in inhuman conditions,” it says.

Particularly damaging is the banned trade in tiger parts much of which is used for its presumed pharmaceutical benefits.

“The World Chinese Medicine Society has declared that tiger parts are not necessary in traditional medicines and that alternatives are available and effective. Yet the illegal trade still flourishes.

Poaching has become so intense that tigers have disappeared from many parks throughout Asia.

“Nowhere has the impact been greater than in India and Nepal which remain the bastions of tiger conservation,” says the document and added that Nepal has emerged as the transit hub for the trade in illegal wildlife commodities destined for consumption in East China.

“Laos is recognized as both a source and transit country while Viet Nam is a transit hub for illegal wildlife trade,” it says.

The economic value of the illegal wildlife trade is determined primarily by cross-border factors. Wildlife are poached in one country, stockpiled in another, and then traded beyond the South Asia region.

“Lack of uniformity in enforcement can result in migration of the trade to other countries with less stringent enforcement. The trade is controlled by criminal organizations which have considerable power over the market and the prices paid to poachers and carriers, making control of the trade even more challenging,” it says.

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‘SA breeders embrace growing Asian demand for lion bones’

[Source:  ‘SA breeders embrace growing Asian demand for lion bones’, by Faranaaz Parker, Mail and Guardian, South Africa, 20120705, ^http://mg.co.za/article/2012-07-04-sa-breeders-embrace-growing-asian-demand-for-lion-bones] .

Desktop activists have joined conservationists to raise awareness about the growing demand for lion bones from users of traditional Chinese medicine, but breeders have defended the right to hunt lions born in captivity.

Last week, the online activist organisation Avaaz.com launched a petition imploring President Jacob Zuma to ban the trade of lion bones. “As citizens from around the world with great respect for South Africa and its magnificent natural heritage, we appeal to you to ban the cruel and senseless trade in lion bones and organs, which is encouraging an industry that could drive lions to the brink of extinction,” says the petition, which garnered over 630 000 signatures in a week.

Lion bones are a sought-after ingredient used to make lion bone wine, a substitute for the traditional Asian cure-all, tiger bone wine, which fetches up to R250 000 a case at illicit auctions.

Conservationists have warned that captive breeding and canned hunting programmes in South Africa are providing a source for the lion bone trade. Canned lion hunting is legal in South Africa, as is the exporting of lion carcasses. Lion populations across Africa have been reduced by 90% over the past 50 years, but lion breeders say their operations have nothing to do with the continent’s wild populations.

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The price of trophies
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Breeders can benefit financially a number of times from the same lion. Cubs are often rented as tourist attractions and visitors pay to pet and interact with them. The fee paid by visitors is then fed back into captive breeding programmes. As adults, the lions are sold to hunters in canned hunting arrangements.

Farmers and hunting operators charge in the region of about $20 000 (R160 000) as a “trophy price” and hunters can expect to pay around $18 000 (R145 000) for other services, excluding taxidermy.

Bob Parsons – Elephant Killer

But the hunters are only interested in the head and skin of the lion, and often leave the bones with the breeder, who can then sell the bones, with a government permit, to Asian buyers for use in making lion bone wine.

It’s estimated that a complete lion skeleton can sell for as much as R80 000. Last year it emerged that over 1 400 lion and leopard trophies were exported from the country in 2009 and 2010.

.Robert Borsak – elephant trophyist

New South Wales Shooters and Fishers MP Robert Borsak with an elephant shot on safari in Zimbabwe, June 2008.

[Source: ABC, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-13/nsw-mp-robert-borsak-with-an-elephant-shot-on/2619226]

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According to the environmental affairs minister, in 2010, 153 live lions were exported as well as 46 lion skins, 235 carcasses, 592 trophies, 43 bodies and 41 skulls. It was noted that these figures were incomplete as the provinces had not yet captured all their data. Yet there was a 150% growth in exports of lion products from 2009 and 2010.

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‘Amplifying an illegal industry

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Chris Mercer, director of the Campaign Against Canned Hunting, said hunting captive-bred lions was “hideously damaging” to conservation. “It’s farming with alternative livestock. They’re only doing it because they make more money farming lions than they do sheep or cattle. But they don’t realise they’re harming the wild populations by creating and amplifying an illegal industry and allowing it to prosper,” he said.

Mercer said he believes the export of lion bones and in fact the entire canned hunting industry should be banned. He pointed out that there was a huge overlap between the rhino horn and lion bone trade. “Many of the Asiatic groups dealing with lion bones are the same people dealing with rhino horn,” he said.

He criticised government for taking a simplistic view of the matter and overlooking the dangers the lion bone trade poses. “The very people who are doing our rhino horn [poaching] are making money out of this. You can just imagine how the illegal trade is going to piggy-back itself onto this legal trade,” he warned.

Banning the entire trade will be difficult. There are almost 200 lion breeders in the country, many of whom are part of the powerful Predator Breeders’ lobby group. The breeding of lions for trophy hunting is a lucrative business. In 2009, the economic value of trophy hunting was estimated to be between R153-million and R832-million.

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Rapidly going extinct

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But Pieter Kat, director of the UK-based conservation organisation LionAid, said a lot could be achieved simply by placing a ban on the export of lion bones. Lions are listed on appendix two of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which means that a government permit is needed to export any lion products. “It will take a position of responsibility by South Africa to say, ‘No more, we will not allow this,'” he said.

“South Africa is within its rights [to] say no more export permits,” said Kat.

Kat said that while one could argue about the ethics of breeding lions just to be shot, it was important to bear in mind that whatever South Africa did in terms of its legal trade in lion bones would affect wild lion populations all over the continent.

Kat pointed out that there are only about 20 000 lions left on the entire continent – down from about 200 000 in the 1970s. In the past few years Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville have lost all their lions, while countries like Nigeria, Malawi and Senegal have only a few dozen lions left.

“We’re dealing with a species that is rapidly going extinct but because we are not really focused on lions – we’re talking about elephants and rhinos – it’s a silent extinction,” he said.

He warned that allowing the trade in lion bones to proliferate would stimulate a demand for the product. “Soon someone will [realise] it’s cheaper for to poach than to pay the owner of a captive animal to get the bones,” he said.

But Professor Pieter Potgieter, chairperson of the South African Predator Breeders’ Association, defended the industry saying there is little difference between breeding lions and any other mammal. “Chickens are killed by humans. How are lions different from them?” he asked.

“In principle a lion is not more or less than a crocodile, an ostrich or a butterfly. It’s a form of life. Breeding animals for human exploitation is a natural human process,” he said.

Potgieter said that breeding and hunting lions was only deplorable in the eyes of the public because a “sympathetic myth has been created about the lion as the king of the animals”.

He justified the practice, saying the export of lion bones is a legal trade authorised by the department of environmental affairs and denied that South Africa’s approach to captive breeding and canned lion hunting was feeding into the Asian demand for lion bones. “I don’t think that market is being created by the South African situation. That would happen anyhow and the more the Asian tiger gets extinct, the more people will try to get hold of lion bones as a substitute,” he said.

In 2007 former environmental affairs minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk attempted to put the brakes on canned lion hunting. It was widely reported that the activity had been banned in the country but this is not the case.

Some changes to legislation were made but the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the Predator Breeders’ Association and overturned an attempt to enforce a two-year waiting period during which a captive-bred lion would be allowed to roam freely in an extensive wildlife system before being hunted, which conservationists had labeled an attempt to “pretend that the lion is wild”.

The environmental affairs department did not respond to questions by the time of going to print.’

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‘Bodies of 14 rare Sumatran tigers seized’

[Source:  ‘Bodies of 14 rare Sumatran tigers seized’, by AFP, 20120719, ^http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-19/flora-fauna/32746788_1_sumatran-tigers-tiger-body-parts-illegal-wildlife-trade]

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‘Indonesian police seized 14 preserved bodies of critically-endangered Sumatran tigers in a raid on a house near Jakarta, a spokesman said Thursday.  A man identified as F.R. was arrested Tuesday in a suburban area of Depok suspected of his involvement in the illegal wildlife trade, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told AFP.

“We confiscated whole preserved bodies of 14 tigers, a lion, three leopards, a clouded leopard, three bears and a tapir and a tiger head,” he said, adding that investigations were ongoing.

The Clouded Leopard  (Neofelis nebulosa)

Is a felid found from the Himalayan foothills through mainland Southeast Asia into China, and has been classified as vulnerable in 2008 by IUCN.

Poached for barbaric TCM.

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‘The factory farm tigers being turned into wine’

[Source:  ‘The factory farm tigers being turned into wine’, by Danny Penman, 20070312, UK Daily Mail, ^http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-441632/The-factory-farm-tigers-turned-wine.html]

Doomed: One of the tigers at Xiongsen animal park being turned into wine

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Cruel almost beyond belief, this Chinese farm breeds hundreds of tigers in rows of battery cages … so they can be killed and turned into wine…

King, the Siberian tiger, stares at me through the bars of his cage. His two beautiful, graceful companions pace back and forth across their tiny compound. They look crushingly bored. The most exciting thing they can do is paw mournfully at the dirty pools of rainwater on the floor of their cage.

Although the Xiongsen tiger park, near Guilin in south-east China, appears to be a depressingly typical Third World zoo, with a theme park restaurant and open areas where tigers roam, it actually hides a far more sinister secret: it’s a factory farm breeding tigers to be eaten and to be made into wine.

In row upon row of sheds, hundreds of tigers are incarcerated in battery-like cages which they never leave until they are slaughtered.

Visitors to the park can dine on strips of stir-fried tiger with ginger and Chinese vegetables. Also on the menu are tiger soup and a spicy red curry made with tenderised strips of the big cat. Visitors can wash it all down with a glass or two of wine made from Siberian tiger bones.

A waitress at the farm’s restaurant tells me proudly: ‘The tiger meat is produced here. It’s our business. When Government officials come here, we kill a tiger for them so they have fresh meat. Other visitors are given meat from tigers killed in fights. We now have 140 tigers in the freezer.

“We also sell lion meat, bear’s paw, crocodile and snake. The bear’s paw has to be ordered in advance as it takes a long time to cook.”

Hundreds of tigers are incarcerated in battery-like cages by the Chinese TCM Cultists

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The waitress clearly does not care that she is selling meat and wine from endangered species. She is not worried that selling them is against Chinese and international law, and helps to fuel the poaching that is driving tigers to extinction.

Tigers and other endangered species are being reared on an industrial scale throughout China, despite international treaties forbidding this. The Mail discovered three factory farms breeding tigers in China. The Guilin farm alone has 1,300 tigers, including the incredibly rare and elusive Siberian sub-species.

It rears and slaughters Bengal, South China and White tigers. More than 300 African lions and 400 Asiatic black bears are also reared here for food and traditional Chinese medicines.

The Chinese authorities claim that farms like the one at Guilin are a vital part of the country’s conservation efforts, and that they will one day release these endangered creatures back into the wild.

But my visit to the Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village shows their real intention could not be more different. For the fact is that these animals could never survive in the wild.

Having spent their lives in tiny, battery-style units, they cannot hunt and would be dead within days of being released. Each shed at the tiger farm – and I saw at least 100 – houses between three and five tigers in a space no larger than a typical family living room. In relative terms, they have about as much space as a battery hen.

The animals have all been bred on the farm. The cubs are taken from their mothers at three months and put in a kindergarten. I saw around 30 tiger cubs in this creche, where they stay until they are old enough to be transferred to the battery units.

Many of the youngsters kept leaping at the fencing. The younger ones simply wanted to play like kittens. The older cubs were already showing signs of stress.

Tigers are naturally solitary creatures that roam over dozens of square miles, so it’s hardly surprising that life in the cages drives them insane. I saw numerous examples of stress-related repetitive behaviour.

The mature animals paced back and forth across their cages for hours on end – three steps forward, three steps back. Some hurled themselves at the bars of their prison cells, while others simply stared into space.

Over-crowding drives the creatures to attack each other, often resulting in death. Officially it is only the tigers killed in such fights that can be eaten or turned into wine. But it is clear that many of them die as a result of a bullet to the head.

They are not the only animals killed. For entertainment, visitors to the animal park can watch the ‘live killing exhibition’, a sick spectacle in which animals are ‘hunted’ and torn to pieces by tigers while onlookers cheer.

I watched in horror as a young cow was stalked and caught by a tiger. Its screams filled the air as it struggled.

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So Visit China – see its wildlife, taste its wildlife, souvenir its wildlife!

Not sure what TCM says how Panda Parts heal you or give you a hard on?

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A wild tiger would dispatch its prey within moments, but these tigers’ natural killing skills have been blunted by years of captivity. The tiger tried to kill – tearing, biting at the cow’s body in a pathetic-looking frenzy – but it simply didn’t know how. Eventually, the keepers stepped in and put the cow out of its misery.

Virtually all the tigers from the Guilin farm end up at a winery 100 miles to the north, their carcasses dumped in huge vats of rice wine and left to rot for up to nine years.

The Chinese believe that the tiger’s strength passes into the wine as its body decomposes. They also believe that it is a powerful medicine that wards off arthritis, strengthens bones and acts as a general tonic.

Smelling like a mixture of methylated spirits, antiseptic and congealed meat, it is difficult to believe that anyone would willingly drink it, and yet people pay up to £100 a pint for it.

The Guilin farm also has its own small winery and acts as a distribution centre across China. The distribution manager showed me around with a Chinese tourist.

A small dingy office acts as the nerve centre of the warehouse. On the wall were charts showing that day’s deliveries of tiger wine across China. Six crates were sent to Wuhan and another to Tianjing. Six crates of ‘powdered bear’ were sent to Shanghai. Numerous other cities and countless deliveries were also listed.

We were led into the warehouse, where I was hit with the disgusting and potent aroma of tiger wine. I was led past countless crates containing the foul-smelling brew. In the corner of the warehouse was a huge brown earthenware vat. It must have held at least 50 gallons, and its contents were probably worth around £12,000.

“We have three ages of wine,” said the manager. “Three, six or nine-years old. It helps with arthritis and strengthens old people’s bones.”

She slid aside the lid of the earthenware vat to reveal a reddish-brown liquid with an overpowering smell of meths. A piece of string was pulled out of the vat. Attached to the end was a tiger’s rib cage. Small slivers of dark red flesh could still be seen clinging to the bone, even though it had probably been in the vat for at least three years.

The manager then filled up an old plastic water bottle with a pint of wine and handed it to my fellow tourist. He paid £30 for it.

Whatever westerners think of tiger wine, the Chinese regard it as a potent drink with almost magical qualities. In the past, a Chinese doctor may have prescribed small quantities of wine for a short period of time.

But in recent years, big companies have moved into the market and industrialised all parts of the industry. Now the wine is becoming an essential drink for China’s corrupt bureaucrats and the nation’s nouveaux riches.

Conservationists say tiger farming is not only barbaric, it could lead to the animal’s extinction in the wild.

“It is stimulating demand for meat and wine, and this will inevitably lead to more poaching,” says Grace Gabriel, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

“It costs £5,000 to raise a tiger from a cub to maturity in one of these farms, while it costs no more than £20 in India to poach one. On the market, a dead tiger can fetch £20,000.

“With such a huge margin, it is inevitable that more people will poach wild tigers if demand increases,” she adds. “There are only a few thousand tigers left in the wild, and the last thing they need is increased demand for their body parts.”

If present trends continue, tigers could be extinct in the wild within a decade. Three subspecies have already vanished. Chinese tigers are down to a pitiful 20 animals in the wild and are “functionally extinct”.

There are only about 450 Siberian tigers left in Russia’s Far East. The remaining 3-4,000 are sparsely scattered across India, Nepal and South-East Asia.

The trouble is that, as tigers become rarer in the wild, their ‘street value’ increases, which in turn encourages even more poaching.

Tigers have already become extinct in India’s most famous reserve at Sariska. Numbers have plunged in several other reserves, too.

Most of these tigers will have been sold to traders in China. The Chinese authorities do virtually nothing to clamp down on this illegal trade, and many corrupt bureaucrats and police earn substantial sums from it.

And demand is continuing to increase as ever more bizarre uses for tigers are promoted. Tiger whiskers are used to ‘cure’ laziness and protect against bullets. Their brains, when mixed with oil and rubbed on the skin, are promoted as a cure for acne. Penises are used as aphrodisiacs, while hearts apparently impart courage, cunning and strength.

Tiger farmers also have their eyes on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They hope that a huge influx of tourists will lead to increased demand for tiger wine.

Although it is illegal to trade internationally in such tiger products as wine, the Chinese are lobbying hard to get the law relaxed. This June, the Chinese Government is expected to press the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to allow the trade in ‘medicines’ such as wine produced from farmed tigers.

If agreed, it will lead to a massive increase in tiger farming and tens of thousands of these noble beasts will spend their lives in battery cages.

If the Chinese get their way, then it will almost certainly drive the tigers over the cliff into extinction.

It is almost too late to save this magnificent creature – but not quite.

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Further Reading:

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[1]   ‘Tiger Bone Rhino Horn – The Destruction of Wildlife for Traditional Medicine’, by Richard Ellis, published by Shearwater, USA, 2005, ^http://www.scribd.com/doc/45308802/Tiger-Bone-Rhino-Horn-The-Destruction-of-Wildlife-for-Traditional-Medicine

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The Tiger – an animal far more intelligent that any TCM dimwit

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