Experts say the black market for wildlife has grown by leaps and bounds through the gobal recession: many add that wildlife smugglers and poachers did more damage last year than in any year in modern memory.
No one knows exactly why these markets are now booming but there are some leading theories – and I’ve got some photos that help put these theories on display. For example, here’s a shot that shows the size and scale of ivory smuggling operations now taking place in Africa and Asia:
It’s an x-ray photo of a freighter in the Port of Taipei, taken several years ago and sent to me recently by a group known as Traffic, which follows these black market sales. In the main compartment – in the clear rectangle – you can see three stacks of legal plywood. In the narrow space in front – behind a thick false wall – there’s a giant cache of curving tusks.
This is smuggling on a near-industrial scale. It used to be quite rare. But Tom Millikan, a smuggling expert with the World Wildlife Fund and Traffic, says it’s all but common now. Last year, he says 13 ivory caches roughly this same size were found enroute to several ports in Asia: he believes it likely that several times that many tusks sailed through the ports undetected by officials.
Only global crime gangs can afford to run these sordid operations, argue Millikan and others: gangs that also smuggle drugs, guns and people. They have an advantage in recessions, when enforcement funds are scarce.
“Clearly they’re becoming more involved,” said Millikan. “Which helps account for a large part of the increase in smuggling. In the case of elephants — and rhinos, too — they work with gangs of paramiltary poachers.
Millikan says that’s the reason last year was an “annus horribilus” for the world’s elephants and rhinos – one in which as many as 2,500 elephants are known to have been slaughtered.
“In the 23 years that I’ve been tracking this trade it’s never been so bad,” he says. “As most large-scale ivory seizures fail to result in arrests, I fear the criminals are winning.”
But crime gangs may not be the only people driving wildlife smuggling numbers to new heights: According to smuggling experts at places like Interpol, the economic downturn make actually be fueling the illegal trade, by tempting a big wave of otherwise law-abiding citizens to attempt to make ”easy money” sneaking precious creatures over borders.
“These would be the people who’ve been told that they can make a killing selling plants and animals hidden in their coats and suitcases,” said an expert who chose not to be identified. “They’re the ones who often act as middlemen for buyers who are very rarely caught. Oftentimes these smugglers do not know what they’re doing, but that doesn’t seem to stop them. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/17/illegal-wildlife-trade-11_n_709586.html#s135081&title=Songbird_Socks
No one has attempted to put numbers to this speculative trend but people working in the field say there’s a there here. Officials at Traffic, the group that tracks this market, sent me several emblematic pictures. For example, here’s a man arrested at the San Francisco airport when the parrots in his pant legs started pooping on his dress shoes.
Then there’s this attempt to sneak rare reptile and bird eggs past a customs station i a special “egg shirt.”
Experts say these kinds of scenes may seem a little funny the first several times they are encountered. But when the small-time smugglers start to turn up almost endlessly, the trend lines start becoming scary.
For example: Here’s a partial list of creatures seized from smugglers in Jakarta’s biggest airport in November, 2011:
–6 small primates
–15 lizards
–9 tree pythons
–16 monitors
–10 Nile crocodiles
–78 assorted snakes
–525 tortoises
–254 lizards
Multiply that haul by every airport in the region. Add the creatures found in cars lined up at border stops. What you’ve get – according to informed speculation – is a tidal wave smugglers linked to the global recession.
I don’t have a picture of the third leg on this stool – one shows the buyers for these products. But if you think that this demand would shrink in a recession, you had better think again. In much of Asia, parts of Europe and in the United States the markets for these creatures seem to be as bottomless as ever.
jnwired 