The city of La Paz, capital of the state of Baja California Sur, in northwestern Mexico, is one of epicenters for shark capture. Its products are destined for local markets, such as Nicolás Bravo's, where a vendor cleans fish caught that same day, in July 2021. Credit: Emilio Godoy / EJN-IPS

By Emilio Godoy
LA PAZ, Mexico, Aug 26 2021 (IPS)

At “The Lieutenant” (“El Teniente”) fishing site, near La Paz (Baja California Sur’s capital) the boats go by and come in all morning. To chase down sharks, fishers make their way to the Holy Spirit island, some 30 km away from La Paz. They unload the products that will be sold at the city’s fish markets.

Since at least 2016, Mexico has become a strong seller of shark fins to China and Hong Kong, under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) mechanisms. In the Asian market, shark fins are prized, used to make fin soup and other delicacies.

A fisher in Mexico gets around $2 per kilogram of shark, but the dried fins can cost up to $70 in Hong Kong, according to news and scientific reports. Data from the National Chamber of Fishing and Aquaculture Industries (Canainpesca) indicates that the fin trade alone represents 8-12% of producers’ income.

But the country’s export data and records from CITES, when compared, reveal discrepancies that seed doubt about whether the shark fins indeed originate in Mexico.

In 2016, Mexico exported 6,401.07 kilograms of scalloped hammerhead shark and 20,088.28 kg of smooth hammerhead shark dried fins to Hong Kong, but the island reported imports of 6,402.66 kg and 10,425.25 kg imports, respectively. In addition, Mexico exported 2 kg to the US that don’t appear in the CITES Trade Database.

The next year the country supplied Hong Kong with 8,286.61 kg of scalloped hammerhead shark dried fins; Hong Kong recounted the entry of only 3,502.05 kg; Mexico sent 10,153.9 kg of smooth hammerhead shark dried fins to Hong Kong, but the island only stated it received 5,975.25 kg. The US bought one kilo of dried fins, without traces in CITES.

The story repeated itself in 2018, when Hong Kong recorded the entry of 833.25 kg of scalloped hammerhead shark dried fins from Mexico, with no inscription under CITES. There was also 45 kg exported to the US not registered in CITES. The US imported 123 kg of great hammerhead shark dried fins that are absent in the CITES database. Mexico exported 1,821 kg of smooth hammerhead shark dried fins to Hong Kong, without traces in CITES.

In 2019, Hong Kong received 3,430.6 of scalloped hammerhead shark dried fins that aren’t included in CITES. At the same time, the island received 1,354.1 kg of great hammerhead shark dried fins and 3,911.77 kg of smooth hammerhead, without registry in CITES.

The Secretary of Environment didn’t authorize shark fin exports to China in 2020, but the country’s trade statistics show the delivery of 6,407 kg to the Asian nation that year. The exports need a special approval to comply with CITES requirements.

By late-April 2021, Mexico had sold 55,674 kg of dried shark fins to Hong Kong, 7,701 kg to China and 536 kg to Germany.

Those numbers show a growing increase of shark fin exports to China and Hong Kong, errors in Hong Kong’s and Mexico’s records, and the probability of illicit fins passing through legitimate trade channels to Asian markets.

Illicit fishing refers to activities such as fishing without a permit, out of closed season, capture of protected species, the use of forbidden fishing gear or giving false information on volumes and captured animals.

For Alejandro Olivera, Center for Biological Diversity (CBD)’s representative in Mexico, the lack of statistical reliability suggests under-reporting. “It’s hard to prove corruption, but it implies that things aren’t being done well, and we are talking about an international body. There should be a better mechanism at CITES, because they rely too much on what the countries report. Every single year there is a debate about it, but a better agreement for certainty and traceability (of the data) hasn’t been reached yet,” he said to EJN.

A 2018 lawsuit filed by environmentalists against the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity’s (Conabio) International Cooperation and Implementation Direction, seen by EJN, accused that agency of issuing non-detriment finding certificates (NDF), used to evaluate export requests of species protected by CITES, without complying with the international requirements.

The complaint, still pending, states that the authorizations lacked estimates of shark stocks, mortality patterns, population trends and extractions by species, among other aspects. It accuses Conabio of approving the delivery of 1,307.23 kg of hammerhead, smooth hammerhead and great hammerhead shark dried fins through 35 NDF in 2015.

Juan Carlos Cantú, director of Defenders of Wildlife’s Mexico program, told EJN there are shark fins that flow illegally throughout CITES Trade Database. The NGO works to protect and restore imperiled species throughout North America.

Cantú, a biologist by training, explained that the volume of fins doesn’t match that of the caught sharks. “It means the fishing authorities that manage notice of arrivals don’t do their job. The international rules aren’t fulfilled,” said.

The Fishing and Aquaculture National Commission (Conapesca), the fishing authority, allows it. Conapesca did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

In Mexico, the North Pacific coasts are important shark catch areas. In the image, a fisherman reviews his morning catch in Mazatlán, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, in August 2021. Credit: Christian Lizarraga / EJN-IPS

Chinese voracity

Hammerhead sharks give birth yearly or biannually. This slow-growing species reaches maturity at around eight or nine years. In the wild, they can live between 20-30 years, but one serious threat for populations is that they’re captured when they’re young, before they have a chance to breed.

The 2020 technical report “Selection of species for inclusion in the review of significant trade following COP 18: Extended analysis”, by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, found a sharp increase in international trade of hammerhead shark fins, of which Mexico contributes 61% of the global supply.

For the great hammerhead shark, it discovered that Mexico provides 71%. As for the silky shark, the country supplies 2% of the foreign market, and the pelagic thresher, approximately12%. For smooth hammerhead shark dried fins, Mexico supplies 76%.

Hesiquio Benítez, Conabio’s International Cooperation and Implementation director general, cautiously defended the export permits.

“We’re among the countries that better document shark fishing. It’s about how we use the best information to agree with the fishing authorities on the volumes of exploitation. The threat of illegal trade is always there but it’s a matter of law enforcement. It’s hard to know its magnitude. The Asian market is pretty irregular, it’s a real vacuum,” he said.

Beginning in 2020, Conabio, which financially depends on the Secretary of the Environment (Semarnat), established volumes of sustainable exports to monitor shark fishing and fin exports. Towards that end, the agency created a coding system, in which green means sustainable use, yellow comes on when the exploitation levels reach 70% and red means a stop for export licenses. This presages a conflict with the fishing sector.

Benítez explained the hammerhead shark has some margin for capture (coded green), the smooth hammerhead and the great hammerhead sharks are near-yellow in the Pacific Ocean, while the silky shark and pelagic thresher are both approaching red.

Conabio is about to publish a book on Mexican sharks included in CITES. Moreover, it will take part in the organization of a global meeting on non-detriment finding certificates (NDF), used to evaluate export requests of species protected by CITES, presumably in 2022.

A global supplier

Some recent reports confirm Mexico’s international role in the shark market.

In its 2018 report “Unintentional partner: How the United States helps the illegal shark fin market”, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which advocates for protection of wildlife and the environment, discovered that the US has become a bridge for shark fin exports from at least 10 American countries, Mexico among them.

NRDC identified dozens of in-transit shipments from these countries, principally to Asia, and the majority to Hong Kong. Mexico was the origin of more than a third of the cargo that mainly passed through the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports in California and Honolulu in Hawaii. Due to the different kinds of protection that countries like Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru apply regarding sharks, the organization doubted the legality of those fins.

According to Rosario Álvarez, the scientific network on migratory marine species Migramar’s executive director, shark populations decrease “in an alarming way”, for being considered commercial species, as “if they were chickens”.

Even though there aren’t population assessments for scalloped hammerhead sharks in the northeastern Pacific, Conabio has found reports of a 80% decrease in the last 70 years in adjacent regions. Pelagios Kakunjá, a non-profit organization in Mexico focused on ocean conservation, estimates that it’s overexploited. For smooth hammerhead sharks, there are no population assessments, but Conabio says that they have suffered a lower reduction compared to other hammerhead taxon, whereas Pelagios has found they’re overexploited.

In the case of great hammerhead sharks, there aren’t population assessments, but Conabio has found reports of a 80% decrease in the last 70 years near the northeastern Pacific, and Pelagios estimates they’re overexploited.

Regarding the shortfin mako shark, Conabio believes its capture is sustainable in the northern Pacific and it’s overexploited in the northern Atlantic.

“The illegal fin trade passes through Mexico. There is evidence that there’s trade out of the law. There is a lack of an adequate legal framework and of social and environmental regards. We seem to be racing at very different speeds: the speed of extraction exceeds the speed of reaction,” Álvarez said.

The data discrepancy has already reached CITES, which in its thirty-first virtual meeting of the Animals Committee this past May and June, suggested inviting the body’s Steering Committee to review the results of the Convention Secretariat’s study on the apparent difference in the trade of shark products, especially that of the notices of arrival to ports.

However, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2021 technical report “CITES and the sea. Trade in commercially exploited CITES-listed marine species” praised Mexico’s “relative success” in reporting trade of hammerhead sharks, “possibly due to the coastal and artisanal nature of fisheries.”

Law enforcement is Mexico’s pending issue, but in its 2018-2020 report to CITES, the country excluded information on law enforcement regarding violations to the treaty and since 2017 the country hasn’t delivered reports on annual illegal trade.

The 2017 “Action plan for North America. Sustainable trade in sharks”, developed by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation –agency of the Mexico-United States-Canada Treaty–, focused on fostering the legal, sustainable and traceable of eight shark species includes policies such as expanding the collection and analysis of shark fisheries and trade data, update shark fisheries management in Mexico, and building enforcement capacity.

Yet, the available evidence shows that Mexico still suffers from delays in those areas.

Defender’s Cantú pointed out that Mexico was always a strong exporter, but “before there was no information and that’s why the species were included in CITES”.

The expert emphasized that any regulation, perfect as it may be, “works provided that the authority applies them. Otherwise, [without enforcement] nothing works. Budget and trained personnel are needed. We have a (fishing) authority who doesn’t want to do its job, another one that more or less wants to do it, but lacks budget and human resources. And a higher authority (the government) that doesn’t care about the environment.”

NRDC suggests that the Latin American countries that contribute substantially to the shark international trade should prioritize domestic law enforcement and international conventions that govern fishing and shark trade, especially the fulfillment of CITES requirements.

Álvarez thinks the solution is categorical: forbidding shark fishing, as Colombia decided in 2020.

“That might discourage the market. There’s an important part of the demand side, as the purchasing level grows in Asia, in addition to the lack of regulation. It’s an unsustainable activity. We saw it before with the turtle and whales in the ’80s”, she commented. (Turtles and whales species were massively hunted, until they got protection from CITES. But turtles are still under threat from illegal fishing and trafficking.)

The conclusions of two workshops on NDF development organized by Conabio in 2019 and 2020 highlighted the importance of the assessment of stocks to measure the level of damage in fishing and of the generation of more information about the use of fishing gears, mortality per captures and the scale of the illegal fishing.

Meanwhile, Benítez, from Conabio, insisted on the importance of staying away from the sustainable limits.

“I’d expect that the export wouldn’t grow that much, for the sake of the species. We have to manage better to have sustainable management for the long term. It shouldn’t be a goal — it is about limits. We’re not interested in maximum exploitation, or in causing a social problem, but we do want to make it clear that we must have limits,” said Benítez.

This story was produced with support from the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Fishermen unload seafood on August 3, 2021 in the port of Mazatlán, in the state of Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico, one of the main fishing and and arrival sites for shark boats in the country. Credit: Christian Lizarraga / EJN-IPS

By Emilio Godoy
LA PAZ, Mexico, Aug 26 2021 (IPS)

The Mexican fisherman Tomás Valencia, aged 70, remembers that around 30 years ago he used to catch a lot of sharks.

“We got bull shark, blacknose sharks, blue sharks, spinner sharks. We caught up to seven in a journey, on average we fished 4 or 5,” he recalled. Valencia began to fish at age 7 and has become a legend in Tuxpan, a town 500 kilometers southeast of Mexico City, in the state of Veracruz, a traditional fishing and oil exploitation site. In his youth he used to tie sharks by the tail, while two other men held the nets that kept the animals.

But those times are memories, because fishers catch less and less. Now, they set sail at 7am in the morning and come back the next day. “Fishing has become very hard. There is little left, because we’re finishing them off. Sometimes there are journeys that that are empty-handed, said Valencia, a member of the “Puerto de Tampamachoco” cooperative, that incorporates 75 partners and advocates for the rights of small-scale fishers.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the sector hard, because the fishermen couldn’t sail due to the risk of contagion and the market collapsed, and it hasn’t recovered yet.

This story plays out in other Mexican marine areas, aggravated by the authorities’ permissive attitude towards fishing of shark species under threat. More often than not, the fins end up in China and Hong Kong.

This assertion is based on the analysis of fishing license databases, notices of arrivals of shark boats and shark fin exports under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Flouting of the rules and a lack of uniformity in reporting has exacerbated the capture of sharks, whose existence dates back millions of years and is key for the health of ecosystems.

As predators they control the balance of other species situated below them in the trophic chain; indirectly, they maintain the health of coral reefs and other ocean ecosystems, since herbivorous fish eat algae that can damage these reefs.

Shark fisheries’ records reveal many discrepancies. Dozens of notices of arrival only report eviscerated or fresh whole shark, without naming the boat or the species. Conapesca, the Fishing and Aquaculture National Commission, has registered 8,278 boats, of which 1,680 have capacity to bring in more than 1 ton of catch to port, and 6,598 less than 1 ton. Data from Conapesca seen by EJN states that between 2011 and last May there have been 109,475 notices of arrivals of shark fishing boats to ports, of which 81,332 were small boats of 1-ton capacity and 28,143 were larger boats, bearing a heavier load.

Of those, there have been 11,128 notices of arrival of boats with weight greater than 3 tons. The largest unloading of shark came from an unidentified boat on October 30th 2019, with 1,103 tons of shark on board, in Tonalá, 938 km south to Mexico City, in the state of Chiapas. Something similar — where boats were recorded bringing in volumes of shark that would have been physically impossible for them to transport — happened in other ports too, such as La Paz in the northern state of Baja California Sur, and San Blas, in northwest Nayarit.

A similar phenomenon happened to the export requests of shark fins under CITES, in existence since 1975. CITES, which covers more than 5,600 animal species and around 38,000 plants, protects them against overexploitation through international trade, according to their risk of extinction. It has three appendices that group species according to how threatened they are by international trade.

In 2017, 8 non-detriment finding certificates (NDFs), the tool used by the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Conabio) – financially dependent on the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat)- to evaluate export requests of species protected by CITES, cite cases of loading reports that exceed the registered capacity of the boat. In 2018 there were another 3 NDFs; in 2019, 4; and in 2020, a total of 6.

Experts interviewed by EJN put the responsibility on the environmental and fishing authorities.

Alejandro Olivera, Center for Biological Diversity (CBD)’s representative in Mexico, deems physically “impossible” the unloading of high volumes of sharks by minor boats, because they can’t transport that weight, and attributes the problem to the lack of surveillance of law enforcement.

This data shows a capture pattern, explained to EJN by a fisherman in La Paz who chose to remain anonymous for security reasons. Major boats catch sharks in high seas and then share the volumes with minor ships that head for ports to unload the animals.

“The lack of control reflects on many fisheries and there are many forms to game the system of reporting. The fishing policy leads to a lack of transparency, to the absence of traceability of the boats and of seafood. Satellite data of minor boats aren’t shared (by the authorities). It’s a reflection of the disorder, which has too little data, and it impedes the fishery sustainable management”, added Olivera.

The consequence: overexploitation.

Juan Carlos Cantú, Defenders of Wildlife’s representative in Mexico, blamed Conapesca, the governmental agency that regulates the fishing sector, by issuing licences and controlling fishing activities.

“One of the things that has to be understood is that fishing authorities are responsible for the extraction (of species) and the surveillance (of fishing) as well. The fishing sector only cares about extraction”, claimed the expert.

Since 2011, Conapesca has given out 1,519 shark fishing permits, the only fishery that has specific licenses. In 2020, there were 170, valid until 2023, 2024 and 2025. By late May, the authorities renewed 21, in force until 2025. Most of the permits come from Baja California Sur, Veracruz, the northern state of Tamaulipas, Baja California, north of Mexico, and Sinaloa in the northwest. By law, the fishing authorities don’t award new licences, only renewals — an effort to keep the number of permits fixed and curb overfishing.

Most of the complaints the authorities receive are due to illegal fishing (only 20 cases). One complaint of illicit possession of sharks was recorded and there were 21 seizures between 2019 and 2020. Illicit or illegal fishing refers to activities such as fishing without a permit, fishing during a closed season, the capture of protected species, the use of forbidden fishing gear or the communication of false information on catch volume.

Those practices have given rise to another problem too: illegal shark finning, which consists of cutting off the fins and throwing the bodies into the sea, for exporting them to China and Hong Kong. The fishing sector — industry and cooperatives alike — denies it with the punctuality of a bureaucrat.

The NDF 192/2019, seen by EJN, cites 6 notices of arrival that reported unloading of fresh fins, which is prohibited by law. In addition, the NDF 121/20 mentions 10 notices of arrival of fins.

To authorize the exports, the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Conabio), financially dependent on the Secretary of the Environment (Semarnat), Conabio applies a conversion factor to tally the number of unloaded animals and the volume of fresh fins.

Hesiquio Benítez, Conabio’s International Cooperation and Implementation director general, explained that the authorizations are based on Conapesca’s data and scientific papers.

“It’s the only thing we can directly pay attention to. We use the information on a case by case basis. The annual estimations come from scientific studies and we see trends. We take the information with due care. Sometimes, the data does not match,” he said.

Conapesca, which imposes fishing closed seasons from May to August on both coasts, didn’t answer a request for comment.

Mazatlán, in the state of Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico, is a traditional shark fishing and landing site. In the image, on August 3, 2021, a fisherman casts his catch nets in the waters of Mazatlán, a seaside resort on the Pacific coast. Credit: Christian Lizarraga / EJN-IPS

Defenseless

There are 111 shark species on Mexican waters, according to the 2018 Action Programme for Conservations of Sharks and Rays.

But quite a few varieties are protected by law, which forbids the capture of whale shark (Rhincodon typus), white shark (Carcharhodon carcharhias) and basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus).

IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species catalogues as “vulnerable” the oceanic whitetip, smooth hammerhead, silky sharks, and bigeye thresher, common thresher and pelagic thresher, while considers the scalloped hammerhead, great hammerhead and shortfin mako sharks “in danger”.

Between 2013 and 2019, CITES approved the inclusion in Appendix II of scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewini), smooth hammerhead shark (Sphyrna zygaena), great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran), silky shark (Carcharhinus falciformis), bigeye thresher (Alopias superciliosus), common thresher (Alopias vulpinus), pelagic thresher (Alopias pelagicus) and shortfin mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus). That classification, which covers 10 shark species, indicates that the trade of these specimens needs a special authorization by the exporter nation. However, Mexico still hasn’t updated its regulation of species under threat.

In 2020, the Secretary of the Environment, in charge of drawing up the regulatory protection, vetoed the addition of scalloped hammerhead, smooth hammerhead, great hammerhead and shortfin mako sharks, in spite of the pressure of environmental groups that delivered scientific evidence of the urgency of that protection. Weeks ago, the secretary opened up a new public consultation on that annexation.

Mauricio Hoyos, the director general of non-government organization Pelagios Kakunjá, emphasized the low number of varieties under safeguard. “Mostly, it’s due to lack of information. That’s why it is so important to generate information to give the government those tools to protect the sharks. The hammerhead (shark) is at serious risk of extinction, because it’s captured too much for finning. It’s very prized. For that, it needs immediate protection,” said the biologist, who authored a study that supported the inclusion of those sharks.

Mexico is the fourth biggest producer of sharks, whose catch totaled 44,657 tons and consumption reached 45,615 tons –0.36 kg per capita– in 2018, according to Conapesca figures. As production doesn’t satisfy the domestic consumption, imports cover the difference. Between 2014-2018, the capture average equaled 38,233 tons.

The rays and shark fisheries are the eighth by size in the country, contributing 2.5% of captures and 2% of unloaded total weight in the last 15 years. The industry uses everything, from the meat until the fins.

To draw up the NDFs, Conabio assesses the actual risk and concludes which species face medium and high threats on both Mexican coasts, especially for their interaction with the artisanal fishing fleet –the main captor of sharks in shallow waters.

An obstacle lies in the absence of information on shark populations, which hinders their management.

Óscar Sosa-Nishizaki, researcher at the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education’s Department of Biological Oceanography, highlighted the lack of “robust data” in fisheries.

“We have a general view, we try to rebuild the historic captures and make the best estimation of every species. The whole system of how capture data is obtained must be improved. We’re rebuilding the specific arrangement. There has to be assessment of the populations and the collection of biological information on birth, growth, migration and so on. It’s a long way until we can say if the populations are well or not,” he said.

The scientist is part of an inter-institutional working group that focuses on the historic reconstruction of shark fishing aimed at determining the conditions of the fishery, which has to be ready later this year.

The 2017 National Fishery Letter, the basis for the management of fisheries , only refers to the scalloped hammerhead and silky sharks in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and describes them as “exploited to the maxim sustainability”.

Besides, in 2018 the Action Programme for the Conservation of Sharks and Rays, which is currently being updated, acknowledges the lack of dissemination, surveillance, monitoring and law enforcement as barriers to the conservation of the elasmobranch.

Moreover, it acknowledges the impacts of unsustainable fishing, disturbances and habitat pollution; and growth of human activities in important ecosystems for the species.

Cantú, from Defenders of Wildlife, slamed Conapesca for blocking protection to the varieties under threat. “Simply put, they are not interested in conservation, but in fishermen’ votes. They’re not doing anything.  The economic aspect has too much weight.” he said.

The Criminal Code typifies some felonies related to threatened species, including those in CITES. The code establishes one to nine years in prison for trafficking, capturing, owning, transporting, importing or exporting species protected by law or under international treaties, as CITES. It adds three additional years if the purpose of the activity is trading.

“It’s very difficult to enforce laws against a whole activity with the intervention of authorities from different institutions that have a totally different view on how things should be done,” said Cantu.

Since 2020, Semarnat faces two complaints by CBD and Pelagios Kakunjá for its reluctance to add the scalloped hammerhead, smooth hammerhead and great hammerhead sharks to the protection regulation.

Olivera from CBD argued that the motive may be economic, because “the scientific arguments are proved and those species have a huge commercial importance. It’s a heavy factor.”

But Sosa-Nichizaki has doubts about the viability of that inclusion. “It’s worth checking the sea cucumber case. It goes from one classification to another one, and it doesn’t imply a better situation. It’s a very interesting challenge, but the results so far for the sea cucumber aren’t very clear. For conservation, inclusion is an important step, but it’s not achieved overnight,” he said.

In 2018, Semarnat changed the sea cucumber status from “special protection” to “threatened”, which implies restrictions for its fishing and trade.

But since that moment, the pressure on the specie hasn’t stopped. In 2018 and 2019, there were 11 cases of illegal fishing and one of illicit trade. Press reports have shown that its capture and commercialization intents have continued.

Benitez, from Conabio, has doubts about the future protection of the species too and complains that the fishing sector doesn’t listen to them. “There is resistance from the sector, but it’s a global problem. There are lots of interests, cooperatives, (fishing) communities,” he stated. 

While the scientific and political debate goes on, fishermen like Valencia only want better livelihoods. “We’re being educated, so that we stop predating, [fishing less and more sustainably]. But we want alternatives, we don’t want to work at sea anymore. I’ve spent my whole life at sea. We want something else, to defend ourselves when there is nothing out there in the water. But the government takes decisions without taking into account the ones affected,” he lamented.

This story was produced with support from the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Savanna elephant populations in 15 countries declined by an average of 30 percent – equal to some 144,000 elephants – between 2007 and 2014. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Guy Dinmore
HONOLULU, Hawaii, Sep 3 2016 (IPS)

A dramatic decline in Africa’s savanna elephant populations caused by poaching – as exposed by the results of a three-year aerial survey released this week – has piled pressure on reluctant governments to back proposals that would lead to bans on domestic trade in ivory.

The United States and Gabon, plus nine NGOs, are co-sponsoring a motion at the IUCN World Conservation Congress underway in Honolulu that would push all governments to extend an existing international ban on the ivory trade to their own domestic markets.“It is unconscionable that these animals are being killed for vanity and trinkets. To stop the trade in ivory we have to stop supply and the demand side.” -- Tony Banbury, Vulcan Inc’s chief philanthropy officer

But several rich nations, as well as some African countries, are opposed to the measure which could prove to be among the most hotly disputed of some 100 motions to be voted on by the 1,300 members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature who hold a congress every four years. A vote is scheduled to take place on Sep. 7, although it is possible that negotiators could first reach agreement on a revised text.

Susan Lieberman, vice president of international policy for Wildlife Conservation Society, a co-sponsor of the motion, told IPS she expected a close vote, but that the shocking results of the Great Elephant Census (GEC) could tip the balance.

“The GEC puts pressure on governments. It shows this is not the time to wring your hands but the time to take action,” she said.

Statistical analysis of the census findings showed that savanna elephant populations in 15 countries had declined by an average of 30 percent – equal to some 144,000 elephants – between 2007 and 2014.

The rate of decline accelerated in that period and is currently running at an annual 8 percent “primarily due to poaching”. Those figures indicate poachers are slaughtering some 27,000 elephants a year

The aerial survey, carried out by spotters in low-flying planes, spanned nearly 350,000 square miles in 18 countries. The data, after statistical analysis, came up with a count of 352,271 elephants. Comparative data only existed for 15 countries. The spotters also counted carcasses that helped compile estimates on the percentage of illegally killed elephants. Forest elephants, more difficult to spot by air, are to have a separate census.

The sharpest declines were seen in Tanzania and northern Mozambique, while some areas showed slight increases or a stable population, including South Africa and parts of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Kenya. Relatively high carcass ratios in Uganda and the W-Arli-Pendjari conservation complex spanning Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso suggested that numbers there had been swelled by elephants moving in from surrounding areas.

Mike Chase, founder of Elephants without Borders, was the principal investigator for the census which was funded at a cost of 7 million dollars and by Vulcan Inc, created by Paul Allen, billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft.

“Armed with this knowledge of dramatically declining elephant populations, we share a collective responsibility to take action and we must all work to ensure the preservation of this iconic species,” Allen said in a statement on Aug. 31 accompanying the release of the census at the start of the 10-day IUCN congress.

Tony Banbury, Vulcan Inc’s chief philanthropy officer, told a press conference on Sep. 2 that it was highly important that motion 007 seeking a ban on domestic trade was passed with broad support.

“It is unconscionable that these animals are being killed for vanity and trinkets,” he said. “To stop the trade in ivory we have to stop supply and the demand side.”

The U.S. has paved the way by imposing its own ban on domestic trade in ivory in June. China, the biggest consumer of illegally smuggled ivory, has pledged to stop its domestic trade. Its prohibition is not yet in force but the announcement had the effect of sharply reducing market prices.

However, according to James Deutsch, Vulcan Wildlife Conservation director, “many countries in the EU are sitting on the fence” over the issue. He mentioned the powerful lobbying of the fine arts and antiquities sectors, even though ivory more than 100 years old would be exempt, singling out the UK. France is among those backing the proposed ban.

A vote by IUCN members to stop domestic trade in ivory would not be legally binding. However, as noted by Lieberman of the Wildlife Conservation Society, such a move by the world’s leading conservation movement would in turn pile pressure on governments to back a similar resolution at the triennial meeting of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, to be held in Johannesburg later this month.

There is debate over whether CITES, which regulates international trade in certain threatened animal species, can use its remit to ban domestic trade, but a vote to that effect would be seen as highly influential if not binding.

Lieberman said Japan was known to be against the motion at IUCN, as were Namibia and South Africa, while other African nations had appealed for help in imposing bans.

Brian Child, a South African professor at the University of Florida, interjected during Vulcan Inc’s press conference to protest that a ban on his country’s domestic and controlled trade of ivory would be a “breach of sovereignty” that penalised South Africa for what he said was its good husbandry of elephants.

Turning to Europe, Lieberman said Germany wanted the issue of the domestic ban raised not at IUCN but at CITES, while the position of the UK was unclear. The EU votes as a bloc at CITES but member states vote separately at the IUCN.

The UK had not even sent a representative to the IUCN congress, apparently as a result of confusion over funding following the referendum decision to quit the European Union, she added.

“It is inconsistent that the UK is not showing leadership on this,” Lieberman said. However, she added, Prince William, a patron of the Royal Foundation which puts conservation among its top priorities, was known to be against the domestic trade in ivory while the royal family had withdrawn its extensive collection of ivory objects from public display.

Because of their biological wealth, Latin America and the Caribbean are a source and destination of trafficked species. In the photo, trafficked parrots in a cage after being seized. Credit: World Animal Protection

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jun 2 2016 (IPS)

Although it violates the international conventions that regulate the wildlife trade, it is possible to go online and find websites to buy, for example, axolotl salamanders (Ambystoma mexicanum) or spiny softshell turtles (Trionyx spiniferus).

These websites reflect new trends in the trafficking of plant and animal species, which help fuel the smuggling of wildlife and form part of the ‘Deep Web’, made up of pages that search engines cannot find.

Despite the magnitude of the damage to biodiversity, Latin America and the Caribbean have made scant progress in fighting wildlife trafficking. The theme of this year’s World Environment Day, celebrated on Jun. 5, is Go Wild for Life.“People have to be taught that they should not purchase wild animals or plants. That would be enough to cut down trafficking to sustainable levels.” -- Juan Carlos Cantú

Because of their biological wealth, Mexico, Central America and the Amazon rainforest – which is shared by Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela – are the main sources of trafficked plant and animal species in the region.

“Latin America represents significant criminal activity, because there are several countries considered megadiverse, which makes this region highly vulnerable to trafficking,” Roberto Vieto, with World Animal Protection, told IPS.

Vieto, who is wildlife campaigns officer for Latin America at the London-based international animal welfare organisation, said wildlife trafficking has seen a resurgence in the region, driven by online trade.

The World Wildlife Crime Report, published May 26 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela headed the region in terms of seizures of trafficked wildlife in the 2004-2015 period.

This region accounted for 15 percent of global seizures, while North America represented 46 percent, the Asia-Pacific region 24 percent, Europe 14 percent and Africa one percent.

The seizures indicate that the main destinations for reptiles, mammals and birds trafficked from this region are the United States, Europe, and more recently, China.

UNODC reports that some 7,000 species have been discovered in seizures worldwide. And the European Union reported in February that wildlife trafficking generates anywhere between 8.9 and 22.25 billion dollars a year. That makes it one of the four main transnational criminal activities, along with drug, weapon and people trafficking.

Smuggling, forgery of documents, and the mixture of legal and illegal products are the favorite techniques used by traffickers of wild species. In the photo are small birds in tin cans and a cage, discovered during a seizure in Brazil. Credit: World Animal Protection

Wildlife seizures are an indicator of the scale of the phenomenon. To cite just one example, authorities in Mexico seized more than 200,000 specimens between 2007 and 2011 and arrested 294 suspects.

“The problem is very serious,” said Juan Carlos Cantú, the representative in Mexico of the U.S.-based Defenders of Wildlife. “For certain species, trafficking is the only threat they face. International trafficking is focused on endemic species, the rarest ones, the ones that are the most threatened by extinction.”

In Latin America, there are legal vacuums, and laws against wildlife trafficking are not always adequately enforced.

One illustration of this: in its first “National report on the traffick of wild animals”, published in 2014, the Brazilian organisation Renctas concluded that more than one million caimans – related to alligators – are poached every year in wilderness areas in Brazil, and their hides are taken to neighbouring countries for processing and export.

In 2015, Defenders of Wildlife stated in its report “Combating Wildlife Trafficking from Latin America to the United States” that the five most frequently seized animals in the region are queen conches, sea turtles, caimans, crocodiles and iguanas.

The lucrative Chinese market poses an enormous threat to species like the totoaba, sea cucumbers and sharks. The capture of the totoaba, a fish that is endemic to the Gulf of California in northwest Mexico, whose swim bladder is considered a delicacy in Chinese cuisine, is a death sentence for the vaquita (Phocoena sinus), a rare species of porpoise only found in the same area.

Traffickers often use legal documents to hide illegal activities or forged permits to smuggle specimens. As UNODC notes, certain markets are especially vulnerable to the infiltration of illegally sourced or trafficked wildlife.

In the photo, an inspector from Mexico’s federal environmental protection agency carries a box of parrots seized in a 2011 operation against the trafficking of protected species of birds. Credit: PROFEPA

Smugglers and their clients take advantage of legal gaps in the region. For example, in Brazil it is illegal to sell wild animals, but it is legal to own them if they were raised in captivity.

Sharks are the perfect illustration of incoherent and contradictory regulations and laws. Most Latin American nations allow them to be sold, but ban their capture for the purpose of removal of their fins, which are in high demand in Asia and provide an incentive to blur the distinction between the legal and illegal markets.

The global gendarme

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), in effect since 1975, regulates more than 5,600 species of animals and 30,000 species of plants from overexploitation through international trade, in accordance with the degree of risk of extinction.

But the millions of species that aren’t covered by CITES can be illegally bred and raised and internationally traded.

Furthermore, national markets are also outside of the reach of the convention, if it cannot be proved that specimens or products have crossed international borders, in contravention of CITES.

In the case of Latin America, since at least 2010 most of the countries have not presented their biennial reports to CITES on how they are implementing the convention, despite the importance of oversight and monitoring in the fight against trafficking.

That gap is going to close, because in its annual meeting in Geneva in February, the CITES Standing Committee decided that its member states must provide statistical information every year on seizures, which will go into an annual report, the first of which will be published in October 2017.

Vieto and Cantú agree on the importance of raising public awareness so that people understand they must not buy wild animals. “Educational campaigns are needed to reduce the consumption of products, step up enforcement of existing regulations and laws, and bolster international cooperation,” to fill in gaps at a local level, said Vieto.

For Cantú, the key is reducing demand. “People have to be taught that they should not purchase wild animals or plants. That would be enough to cut down trafficking to sustainable levels,” he said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The Nassau grouper is one of 19 Caribbean species the Wild Earth Guardians say are in need of protection. Credit: Rick Smit/cc by 2.0

By Zadie Neufville
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Jul 6 2015 (IPS)

Threats from climate change, declining reefs, overfishing and possible loss of several commercial species are driving the rollout of new policy measures to keep Caribbean fisheries sustainable.

Regional groups and the U.S.-based NGO Wild Earth Guardians have petitioned for the listing of some of the Caribbean’s most economically valuable marine species as vulnerable, endangered or threatened with extinction.

In addition, regional scientists believe that climate change could alter the ranges of some of the larger species and perhaps wipe out existing ones. “TCI’s conch stocks are now in a critical phase. This means that unless the fishery is closed to allow the stocks to recover, it will probably collapse within the next four years." -- Biologist Kathleen Woods

Fisheries ministers of the Caribbean say they are concerned that “extra-national activities and decisions” could impact the social and economic well being of their countries and their access to international markets. They have agreed to work together to protect both the sustainability and trade of several high value marine species.

At a meeting in November 2014, the Ministerial Council of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) expressed alarm at the U.S. government’s decision to list the Nassau Grouper, a commercially traded species, under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Even after successfully thwarting the listing of the Queen Conch (Strombus gigas), they fret that other species would go the way of the Nassau Grouper.

The conch and Nassau grouper are two of 19 Caribbean species the Wild Earth Guardians say are in need of protection. The list includes one coral, one ray, five sharks, two sawfish, four groupers and the Queen Conch.

Regional fisheries officials know that such listings will shut down international trade of the affected species. Alternatively, it could lead to rigorous permits and quota systems that prevent trade by vulnerable populations in countries that are without working management structures.

The Guardians say they are driven by the critical state of many Caribbean species and the seemingly insatiable U.S. demand for them. The 14 marine species named are already listed as protected or threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), endangered species associate Taylor Jones told IPS.

“Specifically in terms of the conch, we note that the U.S. appetite for conch meat is having an impact on stocks in the Caribbean,” she said.

Jones noted that when the Guardians take action the aim is to limit the impact of U.S. consumption patterns – which has already caused the collapse of its own conch fishery – on the rest of the world. The United States is the largest importer of conch meat, consuming 78 per cent of production, estimated at between 2,000 and 2,500 pounds annually.

While the Guardians failed in their bid to have the conch included in the ESA, concern for the struggling populations of Conch continue. Even though the U.S. closed Florida’s Conch fisheries in 1986, the population has still not recovered and the fisheries in its Caribbean territories are also in poor shape.

In the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), one of the region’s largest exporter of the mollusk, biologist Kathleen Woods reports that conch stocks are on the brink of collapse.

“TCI’s conch stocks are now in a critical phase,” she said. “Preliminary results of the conch visual survey indicate that TCI does not have sufficient densities of adult conch to sustain breeding and spawning. This means that unless the fishery is closed to allow the stocks to recover, it will probably collapse within the next four years.”

The CRFM Secretariat says it is already looking at management plans for the species most eaten or exploited by its member states. The secretariat says there is evidence that Nassau Grouper populations and spawning aggregations are in decline and is supporting the listing.

The Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) working group discusses proposals to implement minimum standards for the capture of exploited species in November 2014, Panama City. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

The Secretariat has drafted a strategy to implement minimum standards for the management, conservation and protection for the Caribbean Spiny Lobster (Panulirus argus) across all 17 member states. The Secretariat cites concern for falling catches, declining habitats and the absence of adequate management systems in some countries.

In Jamaica, where the lobster and conch fisheries are regulated by the CITES endangered species treaty, authorities are extending protection to other local species that are already stressed from overfishing and climate change, Director of Fisheries Andre Kong told IPS.

“We are looking at bio-degradable traps and will where possible improve the existing management system to include the spotted spiny lobster (Panulirus guttatus) known locally as the chicken lobster,” he said, pointing out that the local species is not governed by the CITES regulations.

Caribbean favorites like the Parrotfish and sea eggs (sea urchins) are in serious decline. Regional groups are seeking to ban those and other species to protect remaining populations and the reef.  Some countries have already restricted the capture of the Parrotfish and the IUCN has recommended its listing as a specially protected species under the Protocol for Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife (SPAW Protocol).

CRFM has already implemented a management plan for the Eastern Caribbean Flying fish, which supports a small but lucrative trade in the countries that fish for the species. A coral reef action plan is also in place, a review of the legislation of several member states has been completed, alongside the rollout of public awareness programmes for regional fishers. One drawback: the rules are non-binding and left up to individual governments to implement.

Woods, who until mid-2014 headed the TCI government’s Environment and Marine Department, noted that despite the existence of regulations that exceed those introduced by the CRFM, conch and lobster habitats in that country “continue to be degraded and lost because of poor development practices like dredging, the use of caustic materials like bleach for fishing and other activities.”

Veteran TCI fisherman Oscar Talbot echoes Woods belief that a combination of factors, including a lack of political will, poor enforcement and corruption in the regulatory agencies, are the reasons the Conch stocks are close to collapsing.

“Poacher boats, illegal divers and some politicians with their own (processing) plants have played a role in the improper exploitation of the fish, lobster and conch. We also have a lot of fisherman and poachers taking juvenile conch in and out of season,” he said.

TCI is one of the few countries that continue to allow the capture and consumption of sea turtles and sharks, but Woods believes exploitation of these species by locals is sustainable. Talbot wants fishers to stick to the rules and exploit the resources during the open seasons only.

A fisherman for over 40 years, Talbot said the unregulated catches are impacting all the islands’ local fisheries. He is concerned that undersized conchs of up to 18 to the pound have been taken, a sore point for the grandfather who sits on the fisheries advisory council of the TCI.

But while regional leaders express “outrage” at the actions of the NGOs, regional fishers support Talbot’s view that only external pressure will force governments to act.

For most countries, the lack of personnel, funding and illegal fishing have hampered progress. This is not lost on the Guardians.

“In general it appears that the region is struggling with limited resources for conservation, including lack of funding and lack of personnel for enforcement of existing regulations,” Jones said.

And while Talbot and Woods lobby TCI Governor Peter Beckingham to champion immediate changes to the fisheries legislation approved and agreed by local fishers more than a year ago, Jones echoes their aspirations:

“It is our hope that ESA listing would make more U.S. funding and personnel available for use by local conservation programmes,” she said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Protected from external dangers, an elephant family roams peacefully in the Mikumi National Park in Tanzania. Credit: UN Photo/B Wolff

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2015 (IPS)

The wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC, is deploying a new forensic weapon – DNA testing – to track illegal ivory products responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of endangered elephants in Asia and Africa.

Widely used in criminal cases, forensic DNA examination (Deoxyribonucleic acid) can help identify whether the elephant tusk is from Asia or Africa.“The ability to use DNA and other forensic expertise provides great support to law enforcement." -- Adisorn Noochdumrong

Asked whether this is a first, Dr Richard Thomas, global communications coordinator at the UK-based TRAFFIC, told IPS: “It’s the first time I’m aware of when it’s been used to test ivory items for sale to prove their (illegal) provenance.”

However, he added, it’s worth noting that at the March 2013 meeting of CITES (the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), State Parties to the Convention were instructed that forensic information should routinely be gathered from all large-scale seizures of ivory (500kg).

Hence this is also an important demonstration of one technique that can be employed in the fight against the illegal trade in endangered species, he said.

The current project is a collaborative effort between Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) and TRAFFIC, to battle the widespread illegal trade of ivory in Thailand.

Asked whether African countries have similar projects in collaboration with TRAFFIC, Dr. Thomas told IPS, “Not currently, although the scope of DNA and stable isotope analysis of ivory are being examined by others as means to determine the geographic origin of ivory within Africa.”

He also pointed out that any wildlife product, by definition, is associated with life and therefore open for DNA examination.

“So, in theory it could be a very widely employed technique in addressing wildlife trafficking.”

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Sri Lankan and Sumatran elephants are on a list of endangered species, along with the black rhino, mountain gorilla, Bengal tiger, the blue whale and the green turtle, among others.

WWF says the global illicit wildlife trade is estimated at over 10 billion dollars annually and is controlled by criminal networks.

Specifically on the ivory trade, Dr Thomas told IPS, “We’re very wary about speculating over black market prices – in part, because they’re black market and therefore unverifiable, but more because of anecdotal evidence that high prices quoted in the media can lead to interest from the criminal fraternity in getting involved in trafficking.”

In a report released here, TRAFFIC said 160 items of small ivory products legally acquired by researchers, primarily from retail outlets in Bangkok, were subjected to DNA analysis at the DNP’s Wildlife Forensics Crime Unit (WIFOS Laboratory).

The aim of the exercise was to determine whether the ivory products were made from African elephant or Asian elephant tusks.

The African elephant Loxodonta africana is found in 37 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Asian elephant Elephas maximas is found in Thailand and 12 other Asian countries.

The study also said forensic results show that African elephant ivory accounted for a majority of the items tested.

“Whilst the relatively small number of samples cannot be considered as representative of the entire ivory market in Thailand, it indicates that African elephant ivory is prominently represented in the retail outlets in Bangkok,” it noted.

This capability supports the enforcement component of Thailand’s revised National Ivory Action Plan (NIAP) submitted to CITES in September 2014.

The plan was developed to control ivory trade in Thailand and strengthen measures to prevent illegal international trade and includes a strong focus on law enforcement and regulation, including the execution of a robust ivory registration system, according to the report.

“The ability to use DNA and other forensic expertise provides great support to law enforcement,” said Adisorn Noochdumrong, acting deputy director general of DNP.

“We are deeply concerned by these findings which come just at the moment a nationwide ivory product registration exercise is being conducted pursuant to recently enacted legislation to strengthen ivory trade controls in Thailand,” he added.

The report said the Thai government last month passed new legislation to regulate and control the possession and trade of ivory that can be shown to have come from domesticated Asian Elephants in Thailand.

With the passing of the Elephant Ivory Act B.E. 2558 (2015), anyone in possession of ivory – whether as personal effects or for commercial purposes – must register all items in their possession with the DNP from Jan. 22 until Apr. 21, 2015.

Penalties for failing to do so could result in up to three years imprisonment and/or a maximum fine of Thai Baht 6 million (nearly 200,000 dollars).

“We remind anyone registering possession of raw ivory or ivory products under Thailand’s new laws that African Elephant ivory is strictly prohibited and ineligible for sale in Thailand,” said Noochdumrong.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

A carpenter organises a load of mahogany, precious wood seized by the authorities in Cuba's Ciénaga de Zapata wetlands. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 2014 (IPS)

A coalition of international organisations, led by INTERPOL and backed by the United Nations, is pursuing a growing new brand of criminals – primarily accused of serious environmental crimes – who have mostly escaped the long arm of the law.

Described as a worldwide operation, it is the first of its kind targeting individuals wanted for a wide range of crimes, including logging, poaching and trafficking in animals declared endangered species.

Widespread poaching, particularly in central Africa, has resulted in the loss of at least 60 percent of elephants in that region during the last decade.

Last week, INTERPOL, the world’s largest international police organisation, released photographs of nine fugitives charged with these crimes – and who are on the run.

The individuals targeted include, among others, Feisal Mohamed Ali, alleged to be the leader of an ivory smuggling ring in Kenya, according to the U.N. Daily News.

The international coalition is seeking help from the public for information that could help track down the nine suspects whose cases have been singled out for the initial phase of the investigations.

Rob Parry-Jones, manager of international policy at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), told IPS, “It sends a strong message that environmental crime is not merely an animal being illegally shot here or a tree illegally felled there. Environmental crime is highly organised crime and can have devastating impacts.”

He said INTERPOL’s response is something that WWF has wanted for some time. “It is also something that enforcement agencies have wanted for some time.”

The political platform and enabling environment for INTERPOL and other institutions to undertake the necessary research, and to be in a position to release such findings, is a welcome advance from a few years back when WWF and TRAFFIC first started their campaign to raise the political profile of wildlife crime, Parry-Jones said.

TRAFFIC (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce) is a wildlife trade monitoring network supported by WWF.

Code-named INFRA-Terra (International Fugitive Round Up and Arrest), the global operation is supported by the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) – which is a collaborative effort of the Secretariat of the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), along with INTERPOL, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Bank and the World Customs Organisation.

In a press statement last week, Ben Janse van Rensburg, chief of enforcement support for CITES, said, “This first operation represents a big step forward against wildlife criminal networks.”

He said countries are increasingly treating wildlife crime as a serious offence, and “we will leave no stone unturned to locate and arrest these criminals to ensure they are brought to justice.”

Nathalie Frey, deputy political director at Greenpeace International, told IPS her organisation strongly supports the INTERPOL initiative to strengthen law enforcement against environmental crimes.

“Whilst INTERPOL has been looking more closely into environmental crimes for a number of years, this is the first time we have seen them reach out to the public appealing for further information and leads,” she said.

By giving environmental criminals a name and a face, she said, “it shows that law enforcement agencies are finally starting to take crimes such as illegal logging and fishing as seriously as murder or theft.”

WWF’s Parry-Jones told IPS that addressing environmental crimes effectively across international borders requires legal frameworks that can talk with each other.

Dual criminality where crimes of this scale are recognised in countries’ legal frameworks as serious crimes — a penalty of four-plus year’s imprisonment — brings the crimes within the scope of the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC), enabling international law enforcement cooperation and mutual legal assistance, he said.

The nature of the crimes illustrates the links with other forms of transnational crime, including people trafficking and arms smuggling, and reinforces the argument over the past few years, both by WWF and TRAFFIC, that environmental crime is a cross-sectoral issue and a serious crime, he added.

Greenpeace’s Frey told IPS environmental crime is “big business”, and at an estimated 70-213 billion dollars per year, the earnings are almost on a par with other criminal activities such as drugs and arms trafficking. That estimate includes logging, poaching and trafficking of a wide range of animals, illegal fisheries, illegal mining and dumping of toxic waste.

Behind these perpetrators, she pointed out, are large networks of criminal activities, with corruption often permeating the whole supply chain of valuable commodities such as timber or fish.

Illegal logging, for example, is rife in many timber-producing countries, and is one of the main culprits for wiping out vast areas of forest that are often home to endangered species.

“Consumer markets are still awash with illegal wood despite regulations to ban the trade,” Frey said.

This, she said, is reflected in the staggering figures released by INTERPOL that illegal logging accounts for 50-90 percent of forestry in key tropical producer countries.

“Whilst we strongly welcome INTERPOL’s initiative to track down offenders and crack down on corruption it is very important that CITES [the U.N. convention to regulate international trade in endangered species] takes much greater action to encourage its parties to step up enforcement and controls,” Frey said.

She singled out the example of Afrormosia, a valuable tropical hardwood found in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

This species is under threat and has been listed as requiring special trade regulation under CITES, yet a blind eye continues to be turned to many cases of illegal trade.

Industrial loggers have a free pass to harvest Afrormosia in the country, despite illegal logging estimated to be almost 90 percent, she said.

CITES is supposed to verify legality, yet hundreds of CITES permits were unaccounted for. Traceability in the country is also non-existent, Frey added.

By allowing the continued trade of species that have been illegally harvested, CITES fails to protect species from extinction, and its lack of controls and weaknesses only serve to fuel environmental crimes, she declared.

According to the U.N. Daily News, wildlife crime has become a serious threat to the security, political stability, economy, natural resources and cultural heritage of many countries.

The extent of the response required to effectively address the threat is often beyond the sole remit of environmental or wildlife law enforcement agencies, or even of one country or region alone, it said.

Last June, the joint U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP)-INTERPOL Environmental Crime Crisis report, pointed to an increased awareness of, and response to, the growing global threat.

It called for concerted action aimed at strengthening action against the organised criminal networks profiting from the trade.

According to the report, one terrorist group operating in East Africa is estimated to make between 38 and 56 million dollars per year from the illegal trade in charcoal.

“Wildlife and forest crime also play a serious role in threat finance to organized crime and non-State armed groups, including terrorist organizations,” it said.

Ivory provides income to militia groups in the DRC and the Central African Republic. And it also provides funds to gangs operating in Sudan, Chad and Niger.

Last week, Uganda complained the loss of about 3,000 pounds of ivory from the vaults of its state-run wildlife protection agency.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Some 50,000 elephants are being killed each year in Africa, alongside 1,000 rhinos, leaving perhaps as few as 250,000 elephants in the wild globally. Credit: PJ KAPDostie/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 2 2014 (IPS)

Environmentalists are formally urging President Barack Obama to enact trade sanctions on Mozambique over the country’s alleged chronic facilitation of elephant and rhinoceros poaching through broad swathes of southern Africa.

Investigators say substantial evidence exists of Mozambique’s failure to abide by international conventions against wildlife trafficking, including to back up allegations of state complicity.“We believe that there are ex-military officials who are providing political protection to the [trafficking] syndicates who are arming and funding these poaching teams." -- Allan Thornton

While President Obama last year mounted a new initiative by the U.S. government to tackle international wildlife trafficking, with a particular focus on ivory, some say Mozambique’s actions are undermining those efforts – and threatening these species worldwide.

A new petition, publicly announced Wednesday, now provides evidence on the issue and urges the president to make use of legal authorities to encourage Mozambique to crack down on poachers.

“Mozambique continues to play an ever-growing and uncontained role in rhinoceros and elephant poaching,” Susie Ellis, executive director of the International Rhino Foundation, one of the petitioners, told IPS.

“Although they have been given direction by the international community to enact certain controls, those have been only superficial and have had no meaningful effect. If you look at the large-scale poaching and illegal trade in rhino horn and elephant ivory out of Mozambique, it’s directly undercut President Obama’s [efforts] on wildlife trafficking.”

Increasingly working hand in hand with organised crime, poachers over the past three years have killed record numbers of elephants and rhinoceroses, particularly in Africa. Some 50,000 elephants are being killed each year in Africa, alongside 1,000 rhinos, leaving perhaps as few as 250,000 elephants in the wild globally.

Driving this illicit market is increased consumer demand in Asia, particularly in China and Vietnam. According to a U.N. report from last year, large seizures of ivory bound for Asia have more than doubled since 2009.

The new petition focuses on the central international agreement around wildlife trafficking, known as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and warns that Mozambique’s outsized role in African ivory poaching is diluting the convention’s effectiveness. The CITES standing committee is meeting next week in Switzerland.

“Available evidence indicates that Mozambican nationals constitute the highest number of foreign arrests for poaching in South Africa. Organized crime syndicates based in Mozambique are driving large scale illegal trade in rhino horn and elephant ivory,” the petition states.

“Given the scope and depth of the illegal killing and trade in rhino and elephant products by Mozambican nationals, we urge the United States to … enact substantial trade sanctions.”

High-level complicity

Supporters say that strong action by the Mozambican authorities would have a significant and immediate impact on the global supply of illicit ivory.

Officials reportedly estimate that 80 to 90 percent of all poachers in South Africa’s massive Kruger National Park are Mozambican nationals. Local groups say that on most nights more than a dozen separate poaching parties can be prowling the park, most from well-documented “poaching villages” located across the border in Mozambique.

Meanwhile, enforcement of wildlife-related legislation in Mozambique is said to be essentially non-existent, with penalties for poaching and trafficking thus far not effective. Yet changing that situation has been complicated by what appears to be state collusion.

“It’s impossible for that level of illegal activity to be going on without high-level complicity,” Allan Thornton, president of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a watchdog group based here and in London that co-authored the new petition, told IPS.

“We believe that there are ex-military officials who are providing political protection to the [trafficking] syndicates who are arming and funding these poaching teams. There is substantial evidence implicating both the police and military.”

Mozambique keeps strict control over the types of weapons used by the country’s poachers, Thornton notes, yet such weapons are available to the military. Similarly, police and military uniforms have repeatedly been found in poaching camps.

Thornton says that putting together the new petition took several months, due to the mass of evidence available.

“If all Mozambican citizens were prevented from illicitly crossing over the border, poaching would drop significantly. But there has been no enforcement on the Mozambique side, despite legal obligations under CITES,” he says.

“We believe that the Mozambique government should be held accountable for their activities and act rapidly against these poachers, criminal syndicates and those protecting them. They could close this trade literally in a week.

Unparalleled scope

Thornton says his office is not yet clear on whether the Obama administration has exerted diplomatic pressure on the Mozambique government over the issue of wildlife trafficking. But in filing the new petition, these groups are highlighting the fact that the president does indeed have the legal backing to act on the issue.

Under U.S. legislation known as the Pelly Amendment, the president is allowed to impose trade sanctions if a country is certified to be “diminishing the effectiveness” of an international conservation programme. (U.S. officials could not be reached for comment for this story.)

Further, there is notable precedent under which past determinations – set in motion by EIA petitions – have met with particular success. Two decades ago, for instance, a similar petition was lodged around the trafficking of rhinoceros and tiger parts through Taiwan into China.

That effort resulted in U.S. trade sanctions. Over the following two years, both the Taiwanese and Chinese governments engaged in a broad crackdown on these trades.

“This had a huge impact on reducing demand [for ivory] and reducing the poaching of rhinos virtually around the world,” Thornton says.

“We saw rhino populations stabilise worldwide, because two of the biggest markets had closed for demand. This is the same thing we’re now looking for in Mozambique.”

He continues: “And we’re hoping for a particularly prompt response, because the scope of illegal activities we’re currently seeing – where one country is sending hundreds of poachers into another country – is almost unparalleled.”

A poached elephant carcass in Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 2013 (IPS)

The United States has become the first developed country to destroy its stock of seized ivory, a move being widely lauded by conservation groups pushing for an outright ban on domestic ivory sales.

“Efforts like this are motivated by social change, and through this destruction the U.S. government is saying that ivory has no value – that it is a shameful product,” Jeff Flocken, North American regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), told IPS from the sidelines of the ivory crush.“As long as ivory can be openly purchased, there will be an opportunity for illegal ivory to be laundered." -- Jeff Flocken

“In order for any lasting change to take place, we need to see consumer demand go away, and making ivory products be seen as shameful is the way to address this problem.”

On Thursday, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service crushed some six tonnes of African and Asian elephant ivory, the result of seizures that have taken place mostly over the past 25 years. Importing commercial or private ivory of any kind is a criminal act under U.S. law, unless the item has been certified by an international group, although its domestic sale remains legal.

The government says the destroyed ivory, which includes both full tusks and carved items, likely represented “a couple thousand” dead elephants, and notes this figure could be far higher.

“We want to send a clear message that the United States will not tolerate ivory trafficking and the toll it is taking on elephant populations, particularly in Africa,” the Fish & Wildlife Service notes in a factsheet released ahead of Thursday’s ivory crush.

“Destroying this ivory tells criminals who engage in poaching and trafficking that the United States will take all available measures to disrupt and prosecute those who prey on and profit from the deaths of these magnificent animals.”

The ivory destruction comes just a day after the U.S. State Department announced its first-ever reward – a million dollars – for information leading to the dismantling of an alleged wildlife trafficking syndicate called the Xaysavang Network. On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry noted that the group, based in Laos but with affiliates in Africa, Southeast Asia and China, “facilitates the killing of endangered elephants, rhinos, and other species for products such as ivory”.

Elephant poaching is currently at its worst point in a decade, with an estimated 95 elephants being killed every day, particularly in Africa. Activists say a two-decade-old international anti-trafficking regime, known as CITES, is unable to withstand new pressures increasingly brought by militant groups slaughtering elephants and rhinoceroses as a money-making enterprise.

Consumer demand is also spiking in Asia, particularly in China. According to a U.N. report released earlier this year, large seizures of ivory bound for Asia have more than doubled since 2009.

“We’re hoping the government’s destruction of this ivory sends a strong message that wildlife poaching will not be tolerated and that ivory shouldn’t be considered an investment commodity,” Lisa Handy, a senior policy advisory with the Environmental Investigation Agency, a global watchdog group, told IPS from the ivory crush.

“We’re also hoping this will send a signal to – and we call on – other CITES parties to take similar actions. Currently some other CITES countries are still seeking a legal sale of their stockpiled ivory, while others are stockpiling it for its value.”

Shaming consumers

Under current international agreement, seized ivory cannot be resold.

Yet with this action, the United States joins just three other countries to have destroyed state ivory stockpiles. The Philippines did so in June, while both Kenya and Gabon have also destroyed seized ivory in the past two years.

Both of the latter countries have large elephant populations and have faced significant poaching problems. Like the United States, on the other hand, the Philippines is a major destination country for ivory, and thus these actions could potentially impact on the critical consumer demand that continues to create a value for ivory, legal or illegal.

Currently, the United States remains second only to China as the primary destination country for ivory. While applauding the U.S. administration’s new moves on the issue of trafficking, Flocken and others are now pushing for legislative action.

“We’re hoping the U.S. Congress will now introduce a bill to ban the sale of ivory in the United States, or a moratorium for 10 or 15 years until it can be shown to be effective,” he says.

“As long as ivory can be openly purchased, there will be an opportunity for illegal ivory to be laundered. Currently the U.S. laws on ivory are so riddled with loopholes that they are almost impossible to enforce. A clear-cut ban, on the other hand, would remove the U.S. as a major demand country.”

Legal versus illegal ivory, Flocken notes, is almost impossible to differentiate.

Closing loopholes

According to the White House, worldwide wildlife trafficking could be bringing in upwards of 10 billion dollars a year. In Africa, environmentalists point to such high-profile groups as Al Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria as increasingly turning to this relatively easy and lucrative illegal trade.

This confluence, and the illicit funding it enables, has clearly caught the attention of U.S. officials. Over the past year the administration of President Barack Obama has significantly stepped up its engagement on the issue of global wildlife trafficking, and today the issue is receiving higher priority than ever seen at the upper echelons of U.S. government.

In July, President Obama issued an executive order that made available millions of dollars for new coordination and training, including 10 million dollars earmarked for Africa. In September, the White House announced the formation of a high-level advisory council on wildlife trafficking, which is now tasked with coordinating federal government agencies on anti-poaching efforts both domestically and internationally.

Also at that time, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the government’s plan to destroy its ivory stocks, depicted as the first of a series of related actions in coming months. The department is now reportedly preparing to propose multiple changes to close loopholes in U.S. law and regulation that currently facilitate the smuggling of ivory and other wildlife products.

“The United States is part of the problem, because much of the world’s trade in wild animal and plant species – both legal and illegal – is driven by U.S. consumers or passes through our ports on the way to other nations,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe says. “We have to be part of the solution.”

Chinese greed for ivory is taking its toll on the African elephant. Credit: Richard Ruggiero/USFWS/CC By 2.0

By Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR , Aug 12 2013 (IPS)

A distance of nearly 9,000 kilometres separates Malaysia from Africa, but that hasn’t stopped the Southeast Asian nation from becoming a key staging post in the illegal trade of ivory from Africa to China.

“Between June 2011 and March this year, we managed to seize over 10 cases of smuggled ivory,” Khazali Ahmad, director-general of the Malaysian customs department, told IPS.

Close to 50 tonnes of elephant tusk, for which 1,500 elephants would have been killed in Africa, have been recovered in the country since June 2011.

The biggest such haul took place in September of that year, when 695 elephant tusks weighing close to two tonnes were seized in Port Kelang, one of Malaysia’s busiest container ports, 38 km southwest of the capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Two other seizures in January this year from the ports in the northern state of Penang and the southern state of Johore yielded 1.4 tonnes and 492 kg of ivory respectively.

The tusks come hidden under a variety of shipments, be it crates of salted fish, sawn timber or even peanuts. Marked as ‘Export to Malaysia’, local agents, knowingly or unknowingly, declare that the cargo is bound onward to China, making it difficult for the authorities to trace the eventual recipient there. The caches are also accompanied by multiple documents, obfuscating the trail even further.

“All the ivory comes from Africa and is headed towards China,” said Ahmad.

Traditionally, ivory is used to make intricate, expensive collectibles like chopsticks, bookmarks, Chinese cultural figurines as well as ornaments. These find enormous favour with the neo-rich in China as well as among the significant minorities of wealthy people of Chinese descent in outlying countries like Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. They are willing to pay a considerable price for the objects of their desire.

Consequently, ivory sells at more than 10,000 dollars per tonne in some markets. The humongous profits from the trade go towards sustaining several wars waged by military or rebel groups in central Africa like the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which are compounded by freelance poachers, smugglers and organised crime syndicates across the continent.

“It’s very disheartening,” WWF-Malaysia executive director Dr Dionysius S.K. Sharma told IPS. “The price of ivory is making the situation insane.”

The greed for ivory is taking its toll on the African elephant, whose numbers are declining steadily, so much so that scientists fear the species is becoming close to endangered.

Concern over Malaysia’s role as a transhipment hub for illegal ivory was highlighted for the first time at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in July. Ivory trade is banned under CITES.
The country, a party to the convention since 1975, was asked to report on what action it has taken to address the issue.

Within Malaysia, there is a growing realisation that the recorded seizures could just be the tip of the iceberg. “How much more African ivory is slipping through our ports?” said Kulasegaran Murugesan, a Malaysian lawmaker and a vocal campaigner for wildlife protection.

The question is, he told IPS, “Do we let this happen and blame others for the illegal trade or do we act proactively and decisively to arrest the ivory trade?”

Murugesan is determined to raise the subject in Parliament, and also intends to apply pressure on port operators, customs and wildlife officials to deny international traffickers the use of Malaysian ports.

The officials say there is little they can do, besides tough action at ports and airports, including the use of scanners. Malaysia’s porous borders allow people and goods to come and go as they please, making the country a preferred outpost for traffickers.

Commending the customs department on its vigilance, William Schaedla, the Southeast Asian director of wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, said they hoped “to see it pursue all leads towards finding the criminals that are using Malaysia as a transit point for ivory.”

“We also urge authorities to ensure proper systems are in place to catalogue and stockpile the seized ivory,” Schaedla told IPS.

Seized ivory must be destroyed publicly, but activists say this has not been done yet. It could well have found its way back into the market.

“We are in the midst of doing an inventory of the ivory seized,” said Malaysian environment minister Palanivel Govindasamy. He added, however, that it was a new thing for them. “We have to develop internationally accepted protocols,” he told IPS. “It will take some time, but we are working on it.”

Malaysia had not had a single ivory seizure in nearly a decade till the middle of 2011. This did not mean there was no ivory passing through its ports and airports, but it did not have the demand that it does today.

There is no demand for ivory in Malaysia itself. “Our people are not willing to pay so much for ivory and the country is absolutely against the illegal trade,” said Ahmad.

So, while Malaysia too has elephants in its jungles and its zoos, there is no trade in elephant tusk. If elephant numbers are dwindling here, it is because of loss of habitat to oil palm, deforestation and the growing hunger for land to cultivate food crops.

Ahmad called for an international initiative, led perhaps by regional trade block ASEAN, to combat ivory trafficking. “We need the best efforts of other countries as well.”

There are only 100 Iriomote wildcats left in Japan. Credit: Japan Tiger and Elephant Fund (JTEF)

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

Efforts to protect the critically endangered Iriomote wildcat, a spotted, shy, feral creature native to the tiny Iriomote Island that forms part of the Okinawa Prefecture in southern Japan, are becoming a highly respected model of conservation here, where the government’s uneven track record in protecting imperiled species has frustrated wildlife activists for decades.

A unique collaboration between diverse stakeholders including government agencies, non-governmental organisations and local groups is helping to preserve the dwindling wildcat population, now numbering just about 100 animals, down from an estimated 300 about a decade ago, experts say.

Iriomote cats have long roamed the forests on this hilly, semi-tropical island, but infrastructure development and expanding farms and sugarcane plantations have encroached on the creature’s natural habitat, while speeding cars on huge roads that now snake through their territory have resulted in untimely deaths of the protected species.

The two-year-old conservation effort has made significant inroads into protecting the cats by pooling a wide range of skills, public resources and native knowledge.

Specific initiatives include wildlife awareness projects targeted at the local population, comprised primarily of subsistence farming and fishing communities; the building of tunnels that serve as safe passageways for animals attempting to cross the roads; and popular tours for visitors to observe the animals in the wild.

“The steady decline of Iriomote wildcat numbers is [due to] rapid economic development on the island,” explained Kumi Togawa of the Japan Tiger and Elephant Fund, an NGO that works to curb the illegal wildlife trade, and reduce domestic demand for wildlife and related products.

She told IPS that recent surveys conducted among the 2,500 islanders of Iriomote indicate rising awareness and respect for conservation work.

“The consensus among the people here is that if they do not protect the species that are native to their land, they will soon loose a key aspect of their cultural identity,” said Togawa.

Susumu Murata, a volunteer conservationist who patrols the streets at night in his car to prevent speeding vehicles from crushing the nocturnal animal, says the natives have “locked hands with the government and conservation experts to work for one purpose – to save the Iriomote cat from extinction.”

During the past two spring seasons, Murata has single-handedly rescued at least 10 kittens and moved them to safety, far away from the deadly roads.

Education campaigns seeking to transform the Iriomote cat into a local icon have been particularly rewarding, as schoolchildren take on the struggle and begin to influence the adults.

The Okinawan archipelago boasts a high level of biodiversity and is home to some of Japan’s rarest wildlife, which the country is finally recognising as part of its national heritage that must be protected at all costs.

This past March Japan took the unprecedented step of listing the hitherto neglected Ryukyu black-breasted leaf turtle in Appendix II of the internationally binding Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).

Endemic to the Ryukyu Islands, a cluster of volcanic islands in southwest Japan, the creature was classified as a “national monument” of Japan back in the 1970s, which amounted to a nationwide ban on the sale, capture or transfer of the turtle without the explicit consent of the commissioner for cultural affairs.

This did not, however, prevent foreigners from trading the animal, which has recently made appearances in mainland China, Hong Kong and on various websites online, prompting Japan to submit a proposal to CITES, the first time this nation of 127.8 million people has done so.

“The proposal to list the Ryukyu black-breasted leaf turtle is a small but significant step for Japan,” said Kahori Kanari, senior programme officer with the wildlife-monitoring network TRAFFIC, who recently co-authored a report supplying evidence of the emergence of an illegal Asian trade of this species.

Another positive indicator of Japan’s move towards a new conservation model is the recently unveiled National Biodiversity Strategy for 2012-2020, outlining national targets that run parallel to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets agreed upon at the October 2010 meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity, including fostering community support to protect the environment.

Marisa Aramaki, wildlife trade officer at Japan’s Environment Agency, told IPS, “We are working hard to strengthen domestic laws to protect biodiversity after decades of destruction.”

The loss of the Japanese otter is a case in point. The animals have not been spotted in the rivers, their natural habitat, for over 10 years, resulting in the species being officially recognised as extinct in 2012.

Aramaki says the primary reason is the pollution of Japanese rivers from mining and other industrial projects. She called the loss of the otter a “bitter reminder” of the need to work with local communities to find lasting protection mechanisms for endangered wildlife.

A whale of a problem

While conservationists are pleased at the changes taking place, they are also painfully aware that sporadic breakthroughs do not mean they are nearing the end of their long struggle.

The most recent reminder that the future of wildlife conservation is far from rosy came on Jul. 17, as public hearings at the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) drew to a close on the case between Australia and Japan, regarding the latter’s whaling practices in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica.

The case, filed by the Australian government last month, referred to what Japan calls “scientific whaling expeditions” during which it catches up to 1,000 minke whales per month for “research purposes”.

Western animal rights groups have long been crying foul over this practice, accusing Japan of using research as a façade for commercial whaling activity. The fact that whale meat is sold on the domestic market shortly after the so-called research has been conducted bolsters these claims.

Tohoku University Professor Atsushi Ishii, an expert on the Japanese whaling industry, told IPS, “The fight to protect the environment here is constantly up against powerful economic and political interests.”

Research indicates that Japan forks out 10 million dollars in subsidies for each whale hunt, a hefty sum that the government defends as not only necessary for gathering scientific data but also as an important national tradition worth preserving.

Japan’s catches of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a key ingredient in many of the country’s highly prized sushi dishes, have also run into international conflict with conservationists who have lobbied hard and won conditions to control overfishing, which is resulting in depleted fish stocks.

Bluefin populations have dwindled down to just 17 percent of their 1975 levels, with Japan consuming 80 percent of the global catch. Here again, activists clash with business interests: prime cuts of bluefin sell for about 14 dollars per piece in upscale restaurants, while an auction in Tokyo this past January saw the record-breaking sale of a single 489-pound bluefin tuna for 1.8 million dollars.

The same goes for conservationists who come up against the fantastically profitable mining industry, which is poised to hit 3.59 billion dollars by 2017.

Until Japan is able to reconcile these contradictions, environmentalists face a long battle to win concessions and protections for Japan’s endangered wildlife.

A white rhino at a sanctuary in South Africa’s Limpopo province. Credit: Jennifer McKellar/IPS

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, May 15 2013 (IPS)

At first glance, the poster appears to be a typical advertisement for an African safari: a large rhinoceros set against a rugged, open terrain. Then you take a closer look and realise something is amiss.

A cluster of human hands has replaced the two horns that distinguish this African animal from the single-horned Indian and Javan rhino. A message over the creature’s head reads: “Rhino horn is made of the same stuff as human nails. Still want some?”

Produced jointly by the wildlife watchdogs TRAFFIC and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), these posters are soon to appear on the walls of public places in major Vietnamese cities including the capital, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City.

Offices, apartment buildings and even airports are all set to become sites in the campaign to end the illegal international trade in rhino horns that is threatening the ungulate to extinction.

Experts say there is no better place than this Southeast Asian nation of 87 million to drive this stark message home. Vietnam has long been singled out by international groups monitoring the illicit wildlife trade for the dramatic rise in domestic demand for African rhino horns.

Close to 290 of the 20,000 rhinos left in South Africa have been killed for their horns since the beginning of this year, according to conservationists worried that such a deadly spree could see the death toll match the record number of 668 rhinos killed by poachers in 2012.

“We are in the midst of a rhino poaching crisis,” Mark Jones, a British veterinarian who heads the London-based Humane Society International, told IPS, adding that Vietnam has recently emerged as the main market for rhino horns.

The spike in demand has been shaped by a belief among locals that has taken root over the past five years: that rhino horn has special medicinal powers, including the ability to treat cancer, cure hangovers, and act as an aphrodisiac.

According to Naomi Doak, coordinator of the Greater Mekong Programme at TRAFFIC, the graphics for the new campaign poster were developed after experts realised that a “large proportion of the Vietnamese public” were not aware that rhino horn, a mass of agglutinated hair, is comprised of keratin, the same basic substance that constitutes human finger and toenails.

She hopes that bringing this fact to light will make people “think twice before consuming rhino horn.”

Yet driving home this message will be “a long and difficult campaign,” Doak admitted in an interview with IPS. “With very few penalties and consequences people really aren’t that concerned about the impacts the consumption of rhino (horn) has either on the animals or on people.”

A status symbol

To understand what wildlife protection groups are up against, one need only take a stroll through Hanoi’s famed Old Quarter, a colourful network of 36 streets where crafts and local products have been hawked for centuries.

Here, shops specialising in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) attract scores of customers seeking remedies made from wild animal parts, including rhino horn.

In his latest documentary ‘Bad Medicine – Illegal Trade in Rhinoceros Horns’, conservationist and filmmaker Karl Amman traces the routes of illegal traffickers from the Africans wilds to the streets of Vietnam, where “rhino horns have also become a status symbol,” he said.

This explains why gold, once the favourite gift among the communist-ruled country’s expanding class of wealthy citizens, has been dethroned by rhino horns, which currently fetch 65,000 dollars per kilogramme.

This is “more than gold, gram for gram,” according to Jones. Though the weight of rhino horns vary, an individual horn can fetch upto 150,000 dollars.

The pressure on Vietnam to curb the demand for illegal rhino horns is expected to grow following the resolutions passed in March at the Bangkok meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The strong language at this 16^th global gathering of 178 member countries fell just short of imposing sanctions on Hanoi.

The Vietnamese government, meanwhile, has consistently denied allegations that it is a major market in this global trade. It often points an accusing finger at its powerful northern neighbour, China, which is also under scrutiny for boosting the illegal wildlife trade, particularly the demand for tiger parts.

But activists have proof, and are not prepared to remain silent.

Do Quang Tung, deputy director of CITES Vietnam, who headed his country’s delegation to the Bangkok talks, told a Vietnamese newspaper in late March, “From 2004 until now, 13 (individuals) involved in rhino trafficking were arrested, with a total of 150 kg of rhino horns.” Two of these cases, he said, occurred in early 2013.

“Illegal trade in rhino horns involves highly organised, mobile and well-financed criminal groups, mainly composed of Asian nationals based in Africa,” a report published by TRAFFIC and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) revealed early this year.

“These networks have recruited pseudo-hunters including Vietnamese citizens, Thai prostitutes and proxy hunters from the Czech Republic and Poland to obtain rhino horns in South Africa,” added the report.

“Pseudo-hunting has significantly reduced as a result of a decision to prevent nationals of Vietnam from obtaining hunting licenses and changes to South African law in April 2012.”

Another embarrassment for Vietnam has been scandals involving its diplomats at the South African mission who were accused of smuggling rhino horns in 2006 and 2008. When confronted about these incidents at the recent CITES meeting in Bangkok, a Vietnamese government official said that the errant diplomats had received “punishment” for their actions.

Hopes are running high that the impending poster campaign will do its part to educate the public and bring an end to the thriving trade. But it will take more than two animal rights groups to halt rising demand.

Nguyen Thuy Quynh, of WWF Vietnam, said recently, “We are seeking support and cooperation from many businesses, celebrities, universities, international organisations and mass media who all have an important voice in reaching and influencing the community.”

Officials of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Wildlife Department holding falcons seized from illegal hunters in Peshawar, Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Apr 2 2013 (IPS)

While the Taliban’s military activities continue to plague Pakistan’s northern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the incessant violence has been a blessing in disguise for one creature: the falcon.

Declared endangered by the Union for the Conservation of Nature, this bird of prey suffered for years at the hands of poachers and hunters, whose unfettered access to FATA and the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province guaranteed the birds a short life span in the wild, with most destined to be trapped, killed or sold.

But “continued militancy has kept the poachers (and hunters) away,” Khalid Shah, an official at the KP Wildlife Department, told IPS, adding that the survival rate of falcons and some other migratory birds has “increased tremendously”.

In 2005 only 2,000 falcons lived in these northern territories, but by 2008 wildlife officials had recorded an increase of up to 8,000 birds.

Experts trace this population growth to the beginning of the insurgency here, which began after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the government in Kabul and sent scores of Taliban and Al Qaeda members across the border into Pakistan’s sprawling mountainous terrain.

Being the U.S. ’s ally in the so-called “war on terror”, the Pakistan army has engaged in a military offensive to root out the insurgents, believed to be scattered across all seven districts that comprise FATA.

Under fire from both sides, civilian residents say militancy has made daily activities – among them hunting and poaching — impossible.

Hunting, trapping, poaching

Falcons begin arriving in Pakistan from Siberia, China, Russia and Afghanistan during the months of August and September and either take up residence in desert landscapes, or nest in the foothills of arid regions.

In FATA the birds find a ready supply of food in the form of “reptiles, mammals, insects and small birds”, while thickly-forested parts of the tribal areas offer a safe and natural habitat, wild conservationist Ali Murad told IPS.

Besides playing host to migratory guests, the region is also home to several indigenous falcon species. In total, Pakistan boasts 10 falcon species at the height of the migration season.

The number of falcons in northern Pakistan has increased from 2,000 to 8,000 since the onset of militancy. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Falcons are monogamous creatures with a slow reproduction rate, placing them in popular demand as rare trophies, Murad added. The female lays just two eggs annually; usually, only one chick survives and takes five years to reach adulthood.

Arab nationals use the birds – particularly the females — for falconry, especially for hunting houbara bustard in Pakistan and other countries.

“Dignitaries from Arab countries visit the KP and FATA to purchase the falcon of their choice from a market fed by hundreds of trappers,” Fareed Khan, a falcon dealer, told IPS.

Falcon trappers attach balls of nylon and feathers to the feet of smaller birds like kestrels, Laggar Falcons and white-eyed buzzard. Mistaking these contraptions for prey, larger falcons sink their talons into the “bait”, causing both birds to tumble to the ground and into the hands of the waiting trappers, Khan elaborated.

Sometimes, small birds like doves, pigeons and quails are placed as bait underneath nets on the ground. When the falcons swoop down on their prey they become entangled in the nets and are easily captured.

The large-scale trapping, hunting and dealing of falcons was in full swing when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) declared the bird an endangered species in 2005, prompting the government to place a complete ban on issuance of licences to those who would interrupt the bird’s natural life.

Those licences had brought the government about 12,000 dollars annually.

Prior to the advent of terrorism, “hunters continued illegal poaching in KP and earned thousands of dollars from the sale of falcons to well-heeled Arabs”, Murad said.

“Now,” according to KP official Khalid Shah, “military activity, gunfire, the use of tanks and other kinds of warfare” have made FATA and the KP virtually too dangerous to enter.

For wildlife enthusiasts and environmentalists who have long fought against the relentless killing and capture of the birds, this is a bittersweet victory, as it comes at the expense of peace in Pakistan ’s tribal areas.

Birds still at risk

Wildlife officials, in “collaboration with the KP Forest Department, are working on habitat improvement for falcons to further encourage” population growth, Shah said.

The government is also working to implement its ban by imposing harsh penalties on those who violate the law.

“The government has issued over 450 challans (orders for payment of fines) in the last five years, bringing in revenue worth roughly 3,000 dollars,” Wildlife Department Spokesperson Kashifullah Shah told IPS.

In March alone, seven falcons have been confiscated and released. An additional 20 falcons were confiscated in January and February of 2013 and released into the wild, he said.

Kashifullah Shah says a shortage of staff and a dearth of adequate facilities have hampered efforts to bring about the desired results.

The population could be raised much more if stronger measures are taken, he stressed.

With a going rate of between one and ten million rupees (10,000 and 100,000 dollars), falcons are prized trophies, and neither militancy nor a government ban will be sufficient to keep hunters and trappers at bay forever.

“Only 450 field workers are not enough to stop illegal hunting and smuggling of falcons in the province, (especially) since each of the workers is required to monitor an area of 200 square kilometres on foot, while the trappers have (modern equipment) and vehicles.”

“We need to deploy more staff with vehicles in potential hunting areas where hundreds of trappers are active, like Swat, Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan to conserve the species,” he said.

“We should also involve local communities by establishing village conservation committees to keep an eye on the hunters. This strategy has worked well in the past.”

This programme also helps scale up public awareness about the endangered creature and the importance of preserving its natural habitat.

(END)