ENVIRONMENT-BRITAIN: Rare Animals Smuggled From Dubai

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Dec 10 2002 (IPS) - There is no accounting for fashion tastes – a woman wearing a live python as a belt was recently stopped at a British airport. Another woman was discovered to be using a live chameleon as a hair accessory.

Customs officials have found rhino horns in statues made of plaster of Paris and suitcases filled with rare birds stuffed into tubes. But the seizure of rare birds and animals at British ports point to international smuggling routes that authorities say they are only now beginning to comprehend.

An investigation by the international environment group WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and Traffic, a joint programme of WWF and IUCN (The World Conservation Union) points to an extensive global trade in wild species, with the United Arab Emirates emerging as the biggest market.

"Dubai is becoming a major centre where rare animals are brought and re-exported," Callum Rankine from WWF told IPS Tuesday. Many of the key smugglers in the business are based in Dubai, and they are helped by lax laws there, he said. And they are finding a growing market in Europe among collectors of rare species and importers of rare animal products for allegedly medicinal purposes.

Dubai is the major centre for rare birds and animals being smuggled out from Asia and Africa, but there are other sources and other routes. One route for smuggling birds from Guyana involves the birds being taken by boat to Grenada – via Surinam – where they are then moved to Barbados, flown to Cuba, then on to Moscow and then Hungary, from where the birds are finally transported overland into Europe.

The report says there is a bustling free trade zone in Dubai and Sharjah, where the Blue Souk is "a notorious market where endangered species are openly on sale." In November 2001, the United Nations CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Secretariat stated they had "discovered that much of the caviar worth 25 million dollars that left the UAE during the first 10 months of this year appeared to be of unlawful origin."

At the same time, there is evidence that UAE may be used as a centre for money laundering and that it may be becoming a transshipment centre for heroin, says the WWF-TRAFFIC report ‘Switching Channels’. "The UAE as a nation state has joined CITES, but partly because each emirate in the federation maintains a separate enforcement policy, the record of the UAE overall has been very poor in terms of enforcement of CITES," the report says.

A spokesman of the Dubai Economic Development is quoted as saying: "Currently the sale of any type of skin is allowed to take place in UAE, whether they come from cows or tigers. The fact that the skins were illegally smuggled from the original country and then brought illegally into the UAE is not our concern. International trade may be illegal, but actually selling them here is not."

On the other side, lax laws in Britain make it a favoured destination. "Although you can be stopped by Customs on crossing our borders with illegal goods, once in the United Kingdom you can’t be arrested for selling the world’s most endangered wildlife," says Stuart Chapman, WWF head of species. "This, combined with the high prices that can be obtained, means the UK remains attractive to illegal wildlife sellers. The police need the necessary powers to apprehend and deter wildlife trade criminals."

The report gives the example of taxidermy specialist Nicolaas Peters, who is said to have formed global networks of contacts that used a wide range of routes to the UK. "Though based in Wales he moved specimens back and forth through other holding facilities in Belgium and the Netherlands," the report says.

"After raiding his premises in Wales, Customs discovered hundreds of specimens, including dozens of protected species from every continent," the report says. "Further raids in Belgium discovered a larger stockpile of specimens and revealed his involvement in organising the killing and smuggling of wildlife and even the bribing of officials abroad."

Illegal trade in wildlife is often not conducted directly between range area and consumer area, but specimens may be transported to a variety of intermediate destinations, the report says.

Specifically, the report says skin, fur and fleece products and traditional Asian medicines including parts of endangered reptiles, tiger, rhino, antelope and bear are gathered from a range of countries, and transported to processing centres where manufacture takes place. Some examples of processing and transit include reptile skins and shahtoosh products.

Traditional Asian medicine manufacturers operating in the Far East gather shipments of endangered species or their parts and derivatives from all over the world, including tiger bones from India, bear gall bladders from Asia and North America, and musk deer glands and ginseng from China and Russia, the report says. The packaged medicines are distributed within Far East markets, and to Europe and North America through commercial shipments and small quantities carried by passengers.

Wildlife smuggling can also be a response to other desires and markets, as in the case of illegal hunting, the report says. In November 2001, following a lengthy undercover investigation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service prosecuted five people in Missouri for smuggling endangered leopards and tigers into the U.S. so that they could be hunted and killed.

Similar undercover operations in India have revealed that hunters will pay vast sums to hunt and kill endangered species such as tigers, Tibetan antelope, brown bears and clouded leopards, the report says. In another recent U.S. court case in May 2002, eight men were indicted on charges which included killing and trading tigers and leopards and selling the meat for human consumption.

In recent seizures in Britain approximately 17 per cent were of live animal specimens, nearly half of them reptiles, while dead items, ranging from taxidermy specimens to traditional Asian medicine pills made up 75 per cent of seizures. Only seven per cent of seizures were of plants, the majority of which were rare orchids which sometimes arrived in large shipments from Taiwan.

ENVIRONMENT-BRITAIN: Rare Animals Smuggled From Dubai

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Dec 10 2002 (IPS) - There is no accounting for fashion tastes – a woman wearing a live python as a belt was recently stopped at a British airport. Another woman was discovered to be using a live chameleon as a hair accessory.
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