Prosperous east Asia fuelling global wildlife smuggling market

The perishing wildlife in India and Africa has got a new cash rich market -- east Asia. In the last on year, over 600 rhinos were killed in South Africa, about 132 leopards in India and thousands of turtles smuggled out of south Asia to a splurging illegal wildlife market in spread across Thailand, Hongkong, Vietnam and Singapore.

Updated on: May 15, 2012, 19:49:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The perishing wildlife in India and Africa has got a new cash rich market -- east Asia.

In the last on year, over 600 rhinos were killed in South Africa, about 132 leopards in India and thousands of turtles smuggled out of south Asia to a splurging illegal wildlife market in spread across Thailand, Hongkong, Vietnam and Singapore.

Kesav Varma, programme director of World Bank supported Global Tiger Initiative (GTI) caused alarm among wildlife experts from across the world on Wednesday when he announced that helicopter-laden hunters have killed over 600 rhinos for their horns in South Africa in less than a year.

A helicopter rent is about $10,000 but the poachers make over a million US dollars by extracting horns from a few rhinos in just couple of hours.

"Even the South African Army has expressed its helplessness to deal with the alarming situation," he said.

A glimpse of the situation was seizure of wildlife body parts worth $ 2.2 million by Hong Kong customs officials in last November from a container shipped from Cape Town, South Africa.

Officials in China, Vietnam and Thailand seized hundreds of elephant tusks in separate incidents and another big haul were found in Malaysia, considered a major transit hub for illegally wildlife body parts.

What has shocked wildlife enforcement agencies is that a vast majority of customers are young and upward mobile east Asians.

"They (youngster) are willing to pay exorbitant price for rhino or ivory tusk jewels. So-called tiger meat sold discreetly in Thailand is very popular," said a senior executive of an international NGO, who was not willing to be quoted on the issue.

The market for wildlife body is expanding.

"The trade has grown because not only people have got more cash but the transport infrastructure has got much better," said James Compton, senior director for Asia-Pacific at Traffic, an international organisation that monitors wildlife trade.

Illegal wildlife trade is now third largest global illegal activity after drugs and human trafficking and amasses a billion US dollars annually.

As the trade rise, the several national have expressed inability to deal with the situation and wants the trade to be legalised.

South Africa is proposing trade in rhino body parts to be legalised and Vietnam government is considering a proposal to allow use of body parts of dead tigers for medicinal purpose. China has been demanding use of body parts of tigers in farms to be used for medicinal purpose.

With demand rising and pressure mounting, saving tigers would be a challenge.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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