Monkeys, butterflies, turtles… how the pet trade's greed is emptying south-east Asia's forests

David Adam, environment correspondent, The Observer, 21 February 2010

Whole species disappear from the wild as millions of animals are illegally exported round the world in a business with profit margins that rival the drugs trade

Countries across south-east Asia are being systematically drained of wildlife to meet a booming demand for exotic pets in Europe and Japan and traditional medicine in China – posing a greater threat to many species than habitat loss or global warming.

More than 35 million animals were legally exported from the region over the past decade, official figures show, and hundreds of millions more could have been taken illegally. Almost half of those traded were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. About 1 million birds and 400,000 mammals were traded, along with 18 million pieces of coral.

The situation is so serious that experts have invented a new term – empty forest syndrome – to describe the gaping holes in biodiversity left behind.

"There's lots of forest where there are just no big animals left," says Chris Shepherd of Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network. "There are some forests where you don't even hear birds."

Seahorses, butterflies, turtles, lizards, snakes, macaques, birds and corals are among the most common species exported from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. Much of the business is controlled by criminal gangs, Shepherd says, and many of the animals end up in Europe as pets. The rarer the species, the greater the demand and the higher the price. Collectors will happily pay several thousand pounds for a single live turtle.

More at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/illegal-wildlife-trade

Revealed: the scale of trade in rare animals

John Mooney, The Sunday Times, 21 February 2010

The young man who drove into the car park of the Outlet shopping centre in Banbridge, Co Down, last Friday morning may have looked like a typical shopper, but he was there to sell, not to buy.

Richard Potter, a pet-shop owner who has a lucrative sideline selling rare and endangered species, had arrived to seal his latest deal.

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In Potter’s case, some of the lemurs were found to have no microchip implanted. Some of the article 10 papers that Potter produced when confronted by the police were irregular.

Rob Parry-Jones, the regional director of Traffic Europe, a wildlife trade-monitoring group, said document fraud of this kind was one of the biggest challenges in regulating the wildlife trade.

“Traffic is aware of a number of instances where reptiles have been imported with documentation claiming they were bred in captivity, when in fact they were collected from the wild,” he said.

“In other instances, permits have been used to import specimens legally, but are then copied and used to launder smuggled specimens,” he said.

More at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7035080.ece

Exposed: Dark secret of the farm where tigers' bodies are plundered to make £185 wine

By Richard Jones, Mail on Sunday, 20 February 2010

Behind rusted bars, a skeletal male tiger lies panting on the filthy concrete floor of his cage, covered in sores and untreated wounds. His once-fearsome body is so emaciated it is little more than a pitiful pile of fur and bones.

Death is surely a matter of days away and can only come as a welcome release. Wardens at the wildlife park in southwest China say, indifferently, that they do not expect him to see the start of the Year of the Tiger which began last Sunday.

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It is a trade that Steve Broad, executive director of the international wildlife watchdog group TRAFFIC, described as 'a disaster' not only for China but the world's remaining wild tigers.

'It is inevitable that wild tiger products will get drawn into a market created by farmed tiger parts,' he said. 'These business people are creating a market that could be catastrophic for the wild tiger population.

'We are not talking about a medicine trade but a trade where the tiger tonic is seen as a pick-me-up and the people who use it are doing it for bravado. The rarer the animal the better. It is nurturing the worst possible market among the rich and naive.'

More at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1252500/Exposed-Dark-secret-farm-tigers-bodies-plundered-make-185-wine.html

113 Governments Agree to Conserve Endangered Sharks

ENS, 17 February 2010

More at: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2010/2010-02-17-01.html

MANILA, Philippines, February 17, 2010 (ENS) - A landmark agreement to protect shark species threatened with extinction was reached Friday as 113 countries signed up to a United Nations-backed wildlife treaty to conserve migratory sharks.

Government representatives signed the shark protection agreement in Manila at a meeting of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, CMS, a treaty administered by the UN Environment Programme.

They agreed to include seven shark species in the agreement - the great white, basking, whale, porbeagle, spiny dogfish, shortfin and longfin mako sharks.

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Shark conservationists are worried about Australia's new shark policy.

"Australia is a longstanding signatory of the Convention for Conservation of Migratory Species and has committed to protect listed species with Australian legislation - applying the EPBC act to those species as they migrate through our waters," said Glenn Sant, who serves as Global Marine Programme leader of TRAFFIC and a vice-chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group.

"We are deeply concerned that the Australian Government has decided not to offer these species any increased protection despite the fact that they have been internationally listed under the CMS and recognized as globally Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List."

Sant says changing the EPBC Act could potentially remove protection from other migratory species that pass through Australian waters. "The Government must explain clearly to Australians what the implications of any such change would be," he said. "This is no trivial matter." 

Tiger Farms in China Feed Thirst for Parts

By ANDREW JACOBS

New York Times, 12 February 2010

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/world/asia/13tiger.html

GUILIN, China — The crowd-pleasing Year of the Tiger, which begins Sunday, could be a lousy year for the estimated 3,200 tigers that still roam the world’s diminishing forests.

With as few as 20 in the wild in China, the country’s tigers are a few gun blasts away from extinction, and in India poachers are making quick work of the tiger population, the world’s largest. The number there, around 1,400, is about half that of a decade ago and a fraction of the 100,000 that roamed the subcontinent in the early 20th century.

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James Compton, Asia program director for TRAFFIC, which monitors the global wildlife trade, thinks the most important step would be for China and other nations to elevate the interdiction of tiger parts to that of illicit drugs. “It’s not rocket science to knock out the big traders,” he said, adding that bodies like Interpol and the World Customs Organization should take on the fight.

Guarded optimism aside, Mr. Compton cannot help but recall the last time the Year of the Tiger came around, in 1998. There was similar talk then of using the occasion to marshal the international community. He also has a vivid memory of the poster produced for the occasion. Its pitch: “Save the Last 5,000 Tigers.”