China, Vietnam, Laos are hotspots for the criminal wildlife trade: does Asia really care about biodiversity?
China, Vietnam, Laos are hotspots for the criminal wildlife trade: does
Asia really care about biodiversity?
As world leaders at COP27 discuss climate emergency and biodiversity
issues, rare and protected species are still being sold
Aidan Jones, South China Morning Post
November 12, 2022
See link
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3199278/china-vietnam-laos-are-hotspots-criminal-wildlife-trade-does-asia-really-care-about-biodiversity
for photos.
Pangolin scales at US$160 a kilogram, monkeys and wild cats for sale – the
online trade in protected and rare species is thriving in Laos, a key
Southeast Asian gateway to the insatiable Chinese and Vietnamese markets
for animal products.
As world leaders gather in Egypt for the COP27 conference to address the
climate crisis – and fringe events discuss the entwined conservation
questions surrounding biodiversity – Asia’s internet remains a bustling
marketplace for the wildlife trade.
Laos, which borders both China and Vietnam, is already an arterial route
for the multibillion-dollar illegal trade in smuggled rhinoceros horn,
tiger parts, ivory and pangolin.
It is a criminal racket that runs from west and southern Africa to
customers in Asia demanding pets and ornaments or powders, broths and
elixirs for traditional medicines.
At the same time, the market for Laos’ domestic forest animals – deer,
porcupines and squirrels – is also surging in an inflation-battered economy
where wildlife experts say poaching is almost impossible to prevent.
On a ‘Buy and Sell Wildlife’ Facebook page, a broker proudly shows off
photos featuring kilos of two-inch scales from the pangolin – a mammal
whose skin and scales have made it one of the world’s most trafficked
creatures.
“I have 3kg right now, if you need more I can get them … but it will take
some time,” the broker told This Week In Asia. “I buy them from villagers
all over. I sell them for 6,000 baht (US$160) a kilo.”
Pangolin scales are coveted in Chinese traditional medicine as a treatment
for arthritis, although there is no evidence of any benefit. Two Southeast
Asian pangolin species – the Sunda and the Philippine pangolin – are
critically endangered according to the The International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which keeps a ‘red list’ of at-risk flora
and fauna.
Their demise has driven demand to poach other vulnerable pangolin species
in Africa, says Steve Glaster of counter-trafficking group Freeland
Foundation.
“Laos has become a ‘free zone’ for Vietnamese and Chinese to store and then
move their products onto the destination market,” he said, adding that the
wildlife trade not only eviscerates biodiversity, but also risks new
zoonotic diseases, which can be transmitted to humans from animals.
Other ads on the Facebook page – first unearthed by Econews Laos, an
environment-focused media start-up in the communist country – offer deer
antlers and bulls’ heads, as well as dead squirrels, civet cats, live
porcupines and monkeys.
Banned but for Sale
Laos is a member of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the global treaty protecting
endangered plants and animals, and has agreed to tackle the sale and
trafficking of endangered species.
The country has banned the hunting of forest animals and the trade in
wildlife, yet the practice continues across its swathes of remote forest
communities who subsist on bushmeat but also sell monkeys, bats, squirrels
and deer at border markets.
The proliferation of legal bear and tiger farms has also blurred the
government position, conservationists say, with the commercial trade firing
continued demand – both legal and otherwise – across Asia for animal parts
and exotic pets.
Laos, a small landlocked nation, plays an oversized role in the global
wildlife trade, conservationists say.
“It is a combination of easy availability of wildlife, parts and products,
the presence of traders and suppliers offering them and its function as a
demand centre,” said Kanitha Krishnasamy, Southeast Asia director at the
TRAFFIC non-governmental organisation. “The existence of open trade in
markets and shops has continued unabated despite … repeated calls for them
to be closed over the past decades.”
Demand from neighbouring countries “for food, medicine, pets, collectibles
and luxury items” continues to drive the trade, she added, while global
crime gangs make use of Laos’ “poor enforcement, porous borders and online
trade” to deliver their illegal cargo.
It says Myanmar’s online illegal wildlife trade surged by 74 per cent from
2020 to 2021 as the pandemic shut borders.
Meanwhile, large shipments of African elephant ivory continue to be found
at ports in Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand, while investigators say
Cambodia is fast becoming a safe transit zone for criminal syndicates
moving tusks into Asia.
As Covid-19 spread fast in early 2020, China banned the trade in wildlife
for consumption or ownership to curb risks of new crossover diseases.
Chinese authorities have continued cracking down on the trade. According to
the Chinese nationalist newspaper Global Times, 14,000 “criminals were
dealt with” between February and May this year alone, in a nationwide blitz
on “hunting, artificial breeding, sale, purchase transportation,
consumption import and export” of wildlife, which saw thousands of tiger,
rhino, elephant and pangolin parts also seized.
But the online market suggests Chinese demand is still sky-high, observers
say.
The role of transit countries such as Laos, with threadbare law enforcement
and hard to police borders, is likely to be under the spotlight when the
United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) convenes in Montreal next
month.