The trade in wildlife meat and pets, as well as exotic flowers and plants, may one day be eliminated. An inter-governmental initiative which brings together law enforcers in the region to combat illegal wildlife trade is slowly but surely making headway, writes CHAI MEI LING.

IT didn’t do some 1,250 Tibetan antelope any good.

The evidence of their slaughter was the more than 250 shahtoosh shawls which the Thai wildlife crime task force seized when it busted a wildlife smuggling syndicate in Bangkok two years ago.

Shahtoosh, which means “Pleasure of Kings” in Persian, is woven from the delicate down fur of the endangered chiru or Tibetan antelope in Kashmir.

And as many as five antelopes are killed to get enough down fur for a single shawl.
Over the years, incessant poaching has reduced the one million antelopes that roamed the Tibetan Plateau early last century to 50,000 today.

As many as 20,000 are believed to be wiped off from the face of earth each year.

The listing of the antelope under Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1979 prohibits all trade in shahtoosh.

But such is the demand for the shawls — they fetch between US$1,200 (RM3,800) and $12,000 on the black market — that it is no wonder the poor antelopes’ days are nothing but numbered.

There’s no stopping the trade from fluorishing — from the smuggling of the wool into the hilly terrain of Kashmir, where they are woven into shahtoosh shawls, to selling them in India and other parts of Asia to feed the markets in the United States, Europe and Japan — up till now, perhaps.

The Bangkok bust is just a prelude to more to come.

What had made the raid possible was intelligence sharing within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Wildlife Enforcement Network (Asean-Wen).

Asean-Wen and Thai enforcers had managed to act on information coming in from India, the United States and Malaysia in a timely manner.

“That was a result of people knowing each other, networking,” says Steven Galster of Wildlife Alliance.

“That’s what Asean-Wen is all about. Who do I call, who can I trust?”

An inter-governmental initiative to combat the illegal trade in wild flora and fauna, Asean-Wen is designed to facilitate the exchange of intelligence among police, customs and environmental agencies.

It is funded by the US Agency for International Development, and technically supported by Wildlife Alliance and Traffic.

Despite the severity of the offence in the Bangkok bust, the traders who pleaded guilty were let off with a mere 10,000 baht (RM1,000) fine.

This was a mere slap in the wrist considering that some RM320,000 worth of shahtoosh shawls seized and over one thousand endangered antelopes were slaughtered. “It’s not good, but at least the offenders had to go on trial and all the shahtoosh shawls were seized,” says Galster, who was speaking at the network’s second workshop in Kuala Lumpur early this year.

“We did a survey recently in Bangkok, and the shops which were willing to sell shahtoosh shawls before now say, ‘No, it’s banned’.”

Tightening the noose

For far too long, wildlife smuggling syndicates had been operating with a free hand.

The risks of being caught are low, the penalty minimal, and the money is good.

But this is changing with the inception of Asean-Wen in December 2005.

“We found a need for this regional grouping because one country by itself can’t handle problems that cut across many countries,” says Klairoong Poonpon, an officer with the network’s Programme Coordination Unit.

“Asean-Wen is a strong network. We exchange information on what the route is, who the violator is, which species is in trend now, who to contact in each country, and the best practices adopted by member countries.”

Under the network, more law enforcers are being roped in, species identification is supported, and training for judges and prosecutors are held.

It’s now easier for law enforcers to differentiate commonly traded species in the region, like tortoises, pangolins and snakes, from their look-alike species thanks to descriptions provided by conservation group Traffic.

Judges and prosecutors from Indonesia, Manila and Thailand are currently being trained on wildlife crime and CITES.

“It was disheartening to find that judges and prosecutors were not even aware of CITES, when we were doing training,” says Traffic’s Southeast Asia director, Azrina Abdullah.

“That’s because most of the time, the cases do not even get into the court system.”

Wildlife crime can be dealt with not just wildlife laws.

In some countries, it can be linked to the customs act, police act, money laundering act, and firearms act.

All these activities, and more, are directed to the network’s ultimate goal - to nab the big players.

The challenge is to go beyond confiscation by focusing more on long-term investigation required to catch those in the upper chain.

Get hold of some key people, and a few links in the trade can be brought down, says Interpol’s regional specialised officer, Wong Kwok Kit.

Hopefully, stringent laws like those resulting in confiscation of properties and crime proceeds can be used against high level syndicates, he adds.

“That would create the most impact on them.”

Like every investigative job, monitoring and nabbing kingpins involves a lot of risk, and in some cases, violence.

Some studies suggest that wildlife crime is 10 times more violent than other crimes, says Galster.

For some reasons, people enforcing wildlife law get assaulted with deadly force, nine times more than their urban counterparts, he adds.

There could be two reasons - a lot of the crimes happen in forested areas, where there are no witnesses and people are more willing to dispose of any proof; and there are some really nasty characters in this business.

“We have drug dealers involved in trafficking wildlife. Essentially, this business is helping to line the pockets of criminal groups, making them stronger to do whatever they want.”

Many opine that Asean-Wen still has a long, long way to go in its fight against big time traffickers, but cooperation among countries is improving.

“It was almost zero two years ago,” says Galster.

Wong says, “As we go on, we see a lot of things that we can do to refine the present system.

“It takes time for Asean-Wen to function to its full extent because it’s only two years old. But we’re heading in the right direction.”

What is Malaysia doing?

MALAYSIA’S initiative in combating wildlife crimes has improved, according to Steven Galster of Wildlife Alliance.

“I have to say, for a while, they were not very well. Too much wildlife was going into and through Malaysia that we know about, and there was not enough interdiction,”

“Recently, however, there are more confiscation and arrests, especially in the northern part of the country.

“Probably the most information we’re getting on confiscation details is from Malaysia. I’m very impressed with the Malaysian delegation in this workshop.”

Initiatives from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks include doubling its staff, and placing officers trained in species identification at the country’s 17 entry points.

It has also reinforced its co-operation with other agencies like the army, police, customs, marine police, airport authorities and non-governmental organisations.

Many also see the soon-to-be introduced International Trade in Endangered Species Act as a big leap forward from the Wildlife Act.

Covering both flora and fauna, the new act will be used against traffickers, while the Wildlife Act remains relevant to local traders.

It is the first piece of legislation that will empower eight management authorities to enforce CITES, cutting across ministries and federal states.

For instance, when the act is implemented, it will be illegal for Malaysians to have Indian Star tortoises as pets.

Listed under the CITES Appendix II, the Indian Star tortoises are not allowed to be traded outside the countries of its origin, which are India and Sri Lanka.

Azrina says the act will propel the authorities to address the issue of enforcement.

“But how well will it be implemented? Only time will tell.”

More and more into the Asian cooking pot

THERE is a growing concern among conservationists that Asia is no longer just a source or an entrepot, but is increasingly becoming a consumer of wildlife itself.

“Nationally, we see restaurants selling exotic meat like pangolin and wildboar,” says Azrina Abdullah, the southeast asian director of Traffic.

“It’s within this region, you don’t even have to go to China for this kind of supper

“It’s a status symbol. Apart from showing off that you have a Mercedes, you must also show off that you have an exotic animal that you can serve on the table.”

There is no official estimate as to how much the whole illegal wildlife trade is worth, but Steven Galster of Wildlife Alliance says it can be somewhere between $12 billion and $20 billion dollars a year.

“I personally think that at least 25 per cent is from this region.”

Estimates or guesstimates, the value will probably be an underestimation, says Azrina.

The favourite route plied by traffickers originates from Indonesia, the country with the highest level of biodiversity, and passes through Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos before reaching China, the top consumer of illegal wildlife.

Turtles, tortoises, pangolins, tigers and bears either end up in cooking pots or are made into medicine.

The US, where demand for exotic pet reptiles from Indonesia and Malaysia is high, is second on the consumer list.

The region’s illegal export to Japan are the fragrant agarwood and slow lorises.

For trade to stop, both the countries of origin and destination must co-operate.

Perhaps more importantly, consumer appetite for wildlife must be killed and more emphasis placed on this crime, which is often overshadowed by the illegal drug and firearms trade.

“People do not understand that when you remove a species from an ecosystem, it can have other kinds of effects on other species,” says Galster.

“If a forest has no animals, it will eventually die. Animals are the blood of the forest.”

What is CITES?

It is an international agreement between governments to ensure that international trade in more than 33,000 species of wild animals and plants do not threaten their survival.