from Raconteur supplement in The Times, 23 March 2010
It was not quite James Bond cast as 007 Dr Dolittle, but it was dangerous. When Tom Milliken infiltrated the criminals running Indonesia’s illegal trade in endangered sea turtles, he had to shave off his moustache and dye his black hair blond not to be recognised.
“I was personally horrified by my appearance,” he recalls. “But it was the only way I could discover how they do business and the extent of the trade.”
His low-budget deception worked, enabling him to document illegal stockpiles of more than 12 tonnes of hawksbill turtle shell, used for jewellery and ornaments. This prompted a crackdown on the industry and the subsequent collapse of the Indonesian market for turtle shells.
Mr Milliken, who now directs the East and Southern Africa office of TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, went undercover in the 1980s. He says that today he would not allow his staff to do what he did then because of “the potential for things to go horribly wrong”.
These days there may be less need for voluntary detective work and the risks which come with it, because official law enforcement agencies take wildlife crime more seriously than they used to. But the international trade in endangered species and their products certainly has not gone away; in fact, some evidence suggests it is getting worse.
After drugs and guns, illegal dealing in animal and plant products is said to be the world’s third largest criminal business. After the loss of natural habitat and the growing disruption caused by climate change, it is one of the biggest threats facing endangered species.
Though it is obviously difficult to estimate, the international police agency, Interpol, reckons that the illicit trade could be worth between £6.5 and £13 billion (US$10 and $20 billion) a year. It involves turtles, seahorses, snakes, lizards, crocodiles, orchids, cacti and many other plants and animals, as well as some of the world’s most iconic species, like elephants, rhinos and tigers.
Ivory price soaring
The worldwide trade in ivory from elephants’ tusks seems to be sharply increasing. New figures show that the number of official seizures of illegal ivory jumped to 14,000 in 2009, 2,000 more than in 2007. The price of ivory, driven by the growing market for carved ornaments in Asia, has increased from £150 a kilo in 2004 to more than £4,000 a kilo.
The latest analysis from the Elephant Trade Information System, set up under the United Nations’ Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), highlights Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Thailand as the three countries most heavily implicated in the illicit ivory trade.
Less well-known is the burgeoning trade in rhino horns, fashioned into ceremonial dagger handles or crushed and used as traditional medicines. The number of rhinos being killed in Africa has risen at least fourfold, from three a month between 2000 and 2005 to more than 12 a month in 2009.
Conservationists say the situation is desperate and the worst it has been for 15 years. Poaching operations are becoming more sophisticated, with criminal gangs flying into game reserves in helicopters, shooting rhinos with AK-47 rifles and hacking off their horns, which they can sell for £130 ($200) each.
A problem in Zimbabwe is that known poachers have managed to escape conviction because of flaws in the judicial process. Smugglers can also be devious and have tried hiding horns inside statues.
Tigers – or at least their skins, bones, paws, teeth and whiskers – are still in big demand in Asia, fuelling a major criminal trade. Skins can be worn or used as rugs, bones are made into traditional medicines, while paws, teeth and whiskers are often considered good luck charms.
Tigers targeted
There are fewer than 3,500 wild tigers left on the planet, with three or four subspecies having become extinct. There may be only 400 Sumatran tigers left, with at least 40 poached between 1998 and 2002, according to TRAFFIC.
A survey of 326 shops on the Indonesian island of Sumatra in 2006 found that 33 were selling body parts belonging to a minimum of 23 indigenous tigers. China, which is celebrating the Year of the Tiger, also keeps about 5,000 tigers captive on farms to harvest body parts.
In addition to animal products, there is a huge trade in the animals themselves for pets. Official figures show that 35 million animals have been legally exported from south-east Asia in the last decade, including seahorses, reptiles, birds and mammals.
The illegal trade could be even bigger and is emptying the forests of animals, say conservationists. In Sumatra, there is a booming trade in orang-utans for pets, though owners often abandon them when they get too large. Over the last 30 years, in Indonesia, as many as 2,000 orang-utans have been seized by the authorities or handed in by private owners.
The market for illegal wildlife products is by no means confined to Asia. An analysis of customs records by WWF has revealed that 163,000 illegal wildlife items were confiscated from people entering the UK in 2006-07. The majority were orchids and other illegal plants, but the seizures also included 959 live reptiles.
Customs officials found 221 ivory and elephant-skin items, 97 Chinese medicines containing tiger bone, rhino horn or seahorses, and 44 snake and lizard-skin products like handbags and shoes. Although some were imported by criminals, many were unwittingly brought back by holidaymakers as souvenirs.
“Unsustainable and illegal wildlife trade is driving many species closer to the brink of extinction, including some of our most loved and most treasured species,” says Heather Sohl, wildlife trade officer at WWF-UK.
Ms Sohl is calling on national and international crime-fighting agencies to step up their efforts to combat the illegal wildlife trade. “Effective enforcement is key to ensuring that poachers, smugglers and illicit traders are brought to justice,” she says.
Hi Rob - is there a mistake in the figures about the rhino poaching? Even allowing for two horns per rhino, the figure of 12 animals being poached a month at $200 dollars per horn only makes for something like a $5000 dollar a month illegal trade?
Posted by: Jon | 24 March 2010 at 03:30 PM