Malaysia Veterinary Forum (Archive)

Dr. TanDY

Hard Times for Asian Exotic Meat Diners

Date: 6 July 2006

Source: Inter Press Service News Agency

BANGKOK, Jul 6 (IPS) - East Asian diners who hunger for exotic dishes that feature rare animals and reptiles may soon have to wait longer to satisfy their taste-buds if the recent rescue of pangolins and endangered turtles are a sign of things to come.

In Singapore, a well-known hub of the Asian illegal wildlife trade, authorities succeeded in busting two attempts to smuggle turtles destined for the kitchens of the rich. This week, authorities in the affluent city-state arrested a 35-year-old Singaporean for importing 630 Asian softshell turtles from Indonesia.

The action comes less than a month after officers from the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) -- on a tip-off-- boarded a ship that had arrived from Indonesia and discovered an illegal consignment of 2,520 South-east Asian box turtles. The reptiles were packed in 72 crates.

Between these two rescue attempts was a bust by airport authorities in Bangkok, resulting in an extended lease of life for 250 pangolins (scaly anteaters) and 64 black-swamp turtles. The illegal cargo, crammed into 60 large boxes, had arrived on board a Thai Airways flight from the Malaysian city of Penang and was en route to neighbouring Laos.

''From Laos, the animals were likely to have been destined for China, where diners would have paid about two million baht (50,000 US dollars) for them,'' Lt. Colonel Thanayod Kengkasikij, of Thailand's forestry police division, was quoted as having told the 'Bangkok Post' newspaper.

These crackdowns are a cause for celebration among nvironmentalists, since they suggest early success of a collective effort by the governments in South-east Asian to tighten the noose around a thriving -- and some say still rising -- illegal trade in wildlife. It stems from a regional network created last December by the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), the ten-member regional grouping.

''What your are seeing is related to the setting up of the ASEAN Wildlife Law Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN),'' Bill Schaedla of the environmental lobby WildAid told IPS. ''We have seen a huge increase in the numbers of interdictions against wildlife crime since ASEAN-WEN was initiated. In the six months since the network's inception, we have already seen twice as many actions against wildlife traders (in Thailand) as there were in the whole previous year.''

In 2004, for instance, there were only five ''major wildlife busts'' and in 2005, there were only four arrests in Thailand. But the first six months since the network was created has seen nine major wildlife rescue attempts by local authorities.

At the same time, adds Schaedla, a leading player in the ASEAN-WEN initiative for WildAid, ''We have seen the first steps toward international cooperation on these issues. For the first time, Thai police contacted their counterparts in Malaysia and Laos following a bust -- this happened after the pangolins were intercepted on June 26th.''

This ASEAN network to crackdown illegal wildlife trade brings together national police teams that investigate wildlife crimes, customs officials and airport authorities to work in tandem, in ways not seen before December, last year.

''Previously, the busts were based largely on luck,'' James Compton, regional director for the South-east Asia office of TRAFFIC, the global wildlife trade monitoring network, said in an interview. ''But now, the right people are acting efficiently and are trying to work faster than the smugglers.''

ASEAN-WEN, in fact, is the largest of its kind in the world. Much older regional initiatives include the network to crackdown cross-border crime between Mexico, Canada and the United States and the Lusaka Agreement, which brings together six Central African countries to arrest the illegal ivory trade.

The coming together of ASEAN's members (including Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) stemmed from cries by environmentalists for stronger government intervention to arrest a cross-border illegal trade running into billions of dollars.

The growing list of animals, birds and reptiles that are shipped by well-organised criminal networks include tigers, leopards, pythons, cockatoos, monitor lizards, freshwater tortoises and bears. ''In East Asia, meat from freshwater turtles is consumed in huge volumes despite the fact that three-quarters of the 90 species found in Asia are considered threatened,'' states the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the global environmental body.

''Many traditional medicines use wildlife as ingredients, for example traditional East Asian medicines use parts and derivatives from more than 1,000 plant and animal species including tiger bone, bear gall bladder, pangolin scales (and) rhinoceros horn,'' adds the WWF in an note on the wildlife trade in South-east Asia.

Even the World Bank sounded the alarm last year in a study that revealed in Vietnam, for instance, the wildlife trade in 2002 was estimated to be 66.5 million U.S. dollars. In Indonesia, over 50 tigers have been killed on average every year from 1998 to 2002, added the study, 'Going, Going Gone: The Illegal Trade in Wildlife in East and South-east Asia'.

According to Compton, China tops the list of countries driving the demand up for the illegal wildlife trade and keeping pace with it are the niche markets in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. But neither is the European Union or the U.S. innocent, he adds. ''The U.S. is the largest importer of wildlife, particularly reptiles, and this is a huge draw for the illegal traffickers.''