The young Vietnamese helping tackle the illegal wildlife trade
Sen Nguyen, Aljazeera
September 10, 2021
See link
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/vietnams-trang-nguyen-wildlife-trade
for photo.
Standing on top of a four-wheel drive looking out at a central Kenyan
wildlife reserve wearing a bucket hat and walking boots, Trang Nguyen
stands apart from most Vietnamese who prefer European charm and East Asian
wonders for their holidays and photographic memories.
But Trang is no ordinary traveller.
The 31-year-old founder and executive director of WildAct, a Vietnamese
conservation NGO, travels the world as a wildlife conservation scientist.
In a fast-growing economy where most people eye lucrative jobs in business
and finance and the government regards civil society with scepticism, if
not hostility, she stands out.
‘’My parents weren’t too supportive when I told them what I wanted to do,’’
Trang told Al Jazeera, acknowledging that few Vietnamese would see what she
does as a dream job.
But there is little else she can imagine herself doing.
‘’I enjoy doing research and so I [have] spent much of my time in the
field, in remote areas and sometimes also putting myself in dangerous
situations. No parents would want their child to go through that,’’ she
said.
Vietnam, which has emerged as a hotspot in the multibillion-dollar global
trade in illegal wildlife, serves as both a transit route and a major
consumer market. Vietnamese crime syndicates have been documented operating
as poachers and smugglers in a host of source countries throughout Africa
and Asia, from Malaysia to Mozambique, according to the UK-based
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).
The EIA says that in the 17 years until 2019, Vietnam was involved in more
than 600 seizures linked to illegal trade, involving the deaths of at least
228 tigers, 610 rhinoceroses, 15,779 elephants, and 65,510 pangolins – all
species that are in critical danger. The group based its figures on
publicly available data on seizures.
In terms of the consumption of tiger parts and products, Vietnamese are
second only to the Chinese.
Many people believe that what they call “bone glue”, or cao in Vietnamese,
which comes from animals like tigers and monkeys, can help treat
joint-related ailments. Rhino horns, meanwhile, are a symbol of affluence,
with some believing the horn can cure cancer.
Trang herself is a colon cancer survivor and was struck by a comment from
her doctor that such beliefs were dangerous given the need for early
treatment with many cancers.
It was a “powerful message”, she told the World Wildlife Fund in an
interview this year, and an effective way for her to tackle the continuing
demand for rhino horn.
Hostility and Denial
Rising concern about zoonotic diseases in the wake of COVID-19, which is
widely believed to have jumped from animals to humans, has helped put the
issue of wildlife trafficking back on the world’s policy agenda.
Vietnam last year issued a directive to halt the already illegal import of
wild animals, including parts and products. While conservationists have
said they support the directive, they also caution much work needs to be
done, including the implementation of the directive.
Trang, who began participating in environment-related activities when she
was a teenager and received her PhD in biodiversity management in the UK
two years ago, says working on wildlife trafficking is not easy because it
is a sensitive topic for both Vietnamese authorities and citizens.
In several public conservation forums in which she has participated, Trang
says people have reacted to Vietnam’s position as a wildlife trafficking
hotspot with hostility and denial.
“I don’t dare to say I am an expert, it is just that I have spent a lot of
time researching this topic. It is undeniable that wildlife animal
consumption exists in Vietnam,” she said. “There are Vietnamese people
overseas, especially in Africa, who are directly participating in illegal
and transborder and transcontinental wildlife trade. This has an effect on
Vietnamese diaspora and the image of the country.”
Setting up camera traps to find the clouded leopard in Kon Tum, Vietnam, in
the early days of her conservation work [Courtesy of Trang Nguyen].
It is a reputation that has also made some sceptical about Trang’s
intentions, she said.
In Africa, she says she has also encountered hostility – with some people
assuming she must be working against wildlife protection because so many
Asian people have been involved in high-profile wildlife trafficking cases
on the continent.
In Vietnam itself, safeguarding wildlife is also a challenge. Some of the
critically endangered species, according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened
Species, are the Vietnamese pheasant and the pond turtle. Saola, an
antelope-like animal, has also become a victim of a massive increase in
hunting to supply the illegal wildlife trade, according to the WWF.
Vietnam was one of the worst-performing countries in Asia (including India
and some Southeast Asian countries) alongside Myanmar, in terms of policies
and laws to protect animals, according to international animal welfare
charity World Animal Protection’s 2020 index.
A “very damaging assumption” held about the conservation sector, according
to Trang, is that authorities and environmental police do not do anything
to curb wildlife exploitation. In her experience, Trang says she has met
many rangers and police who are committed to eradicating the problem and
are willing to collaborate with NGOs like hers.
However, she says many Vietnamese law enforcement officers have limited
experience in investigating and addressing wildlife crimes compared with
other countries due to a lack of access to education and training. This is
on top of the problem of corruption.
“Corruption plays an important role in this trade, as in many other crimes,
and it is crucial to address this issue to combat the illegal wildlife
trade,” she said, without giving a specific example.
“They have many experiences in investigating other things, but
[investigating] wildlife crimes and wildlife animal-related matters have
only recently been a thing in Vietnam. This is something we have to
acknowledge and support them with,” she said.
WildAct has been running training programmes for local communities and
rangers where they can exchange knowledge, plan and implement conservation
projects, such as removing animal traps and rescuing trapped animals, in
several provinces in Vietnam.
Empowering Communities
The organisation is collaborating with Animal Doctors International, a
veterinary clinic and animal welfare consultant with offices in Vietnam and
Cambodia, to provide rangers and WildAct’s community conservation team with
training on administering first aid to injured animals and to members
themselves while on patrol. Although often overlooked, these are important
skills to improve the survival rates of wild animals after rescue, as well
as the wellbeing of the rangers and community members, according to Trang.
“The right way should be to empower as many people as possible,” she said.
Trang has sought to empower women and make WildAct a bastion of gender
equality.
According to Mark Spicer, a former programme manager who worked at WildAct
for two years until the end of 2020, Trang’s advocacy is not lip service.
“It is a key part of where WildAct came from, with Trang as founder and
director, and her experience and the experiences of colleagues in
conservation both in Vietnam and abroad have only served to reinforce
that,” Spicer said, who said he was the only male employee by the time he
left the organisation.
Spicer, who comes from the UK and has a background in conservation and
ecology, says the work he did at WildAct was ‘’unlike anything I had ever
done’’.
“That said, there’s a huge amount to be done in conservation in Vietnam and
for everyone involved it’s a challenge, but there are some great
organisations and highly motivated people trying to do it,” he said.
Trang founded WildAct in 2015, and she also kept herself busy at other
environmental organisations in the early years, working as an illegal
wildlife trade technical adviser in Cambodia for UK-based Fauna and Flora
International and a liaison officer in Mozambique for the US-based Wildlife
Conservation Society. In 2018, she was awarded the prestigious Future for
Nature award for her work to combat the illegal wildlife trade.
Hong Hoang, founder and executive director of CHANGE, a Vietnamese NGO that
focuses on addressing the country’s critical environmental challenges, says
people like Trang are rare in Vietnam.
Trang delivering a workshop on rhino conservation with the local community
in Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy in 2012 [Samuel Mbogo/Courtesy of Nguyen
Trang]
She first met Trang when the latter, then a teenager, volunteered for a
programme run by the WWF, Hong’s former employer. The two have remained in
touch and occasionally cross paths in the small world of Vietnam’s
environmental campaigners.
For CHANGE’s research, Hong also relies on the conservationist’s expertise
in animal studies to help her identify a captured animal she comes across
on social media or news articles.
Hong, a pioneer and prominent voice in the climate movement with more than
two decades of experience, says there has been a “snowballing effect” and
young people are increasingly interested in environmental issues.
The government is also taking more notice than it did before, making it
less risky for people to raise their concerns in a country where dissent is
barely tolerated.
“I have to admit that the government has grown to care more about
environmental issues,’’ she said, adding that there had been pressure from
the international community and social media where users expressed their
awareness of the impact some issues like air pollution have on their
health, jobs and the economy.
Still, Hong believes there is still a long way to go.
“I think it is not at the level enough to build a strong movement in a
98-million population,’’ she said. “I hope there will be more people like
Trang in Vietnam and there will be more opportunities for young people in
conservation and wildlife matters.”
In August, police in north-central province Nghe An rescued 17 mature
tigers from a squalid basement that was part of an illegal breeding
operation. A few days earlier, in the same province, two men were arrested
after seven live tiger cubs were found in their car.
Trang said that, in the same week as this seizure, scientists in Kenya
successfully created embryos to save the functionally extinct northern
white rhino.
“This is wonderful news, but in a perfect world where there would be no
poaching – this species wouldn’t need human help just to ‘survive’,” she
said.
“Similarly, these tigers should not be locked up in cages, but the seizures
brought us hope, as it shows successful collaboration between the
authorities and NGOs to tackle this issue.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/vietnams-trang-nguyen-wildlife-trade