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- <text id=91TT0759>
- <title>
- Apr. 08, 1991: A Grisly And Illicit Trade
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Apr. 08, 1991 The Simple Life
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- ENVIRONMENT, Page 67
- A Grisly And Illicit Trade
- </hdr><body>
- <p>An undercover investigator in China reveals a shocking black
- market in endangered species
- </p>
- <p>By Andrea Sachs--Reported by Mia Turner/Beijing and Tad Stoner/
- Quanzhou
- </p>
- <p> The Chinese man with the cruel face was adamant. He would
- not show the visitor the panda pelt being offered for sale
- without a $10,000 deposit. But perhaps she would be interested
- in a better deal: two live young pandas, chained and ready to
- go, for just $112,000. Of course, he had leopard and tiger
- pelts as well, if she were interested. Eight smugglers gathered
- around them in the dimly lighted, smoke-filled room in Quanzhou,
- an ancient seaport on the narrow waterway between mainland
- China and Taiwan; each one was seeking a $19,000 cut just for
- witnessing a deal.
- </p>
- <p> Unknown to the smugglers, the young woman was not, as she
- had told them, a Taiwanese buyer for wealthy collectors. Rather
- she was an ardent conservationist who had gone undercover to
- document the extent of illegal trade in endangered species
- between China and Taiwan and Hong Kong. For six weeks in 1990,
- under the sponsorship of the TRAFFIC division of the World
- Wildlife Fund, she took a risky journey through southeast China,
- following the movements of a complex underground network of
- hunters, smugglers, black marketeers, thugs and fishermen. While
- she never bought any animals, she found it necessary to hand out
- small bribes of $20, called red envelopes, just to meet the
- people with the wares, which included the nearly extinct Amur
- leopard as well as gibbons, golden monkeys and even eagles.
- TIME's Tad Stoner was permitted, on an exclusive basis, to
- accompany her during one week of her startling sojourn.
- </p>
- <p> This week the WWF will release a report based on the
- investigation that paints a grisly picture of what is happening
- to China's stock of rare animals. "The coast is crawling with
- trade," says the 25-year-old investigator, whose name has been
- withheld to safeguard future projects. "Anything I wanted they
- could get and could get within a week. All I had to do was
- order." China, she adds, "is in grave danger of forever losing
- species that have their homes nowhere else in the world."
- </p>
- <p> No animal is more prized than China's giant panda, a
- national symbol. Only about 1,000 remain in the wild, largely
- because of the disappearance of their bamboo grazing grounds and
- their limited ability to adapt to change. But natural dangers
- have been surpassed by human ones. Lured by the huge prices
- that pandas bring--from $5,000 to $112,000 in a country where
- the average monthly wage is $29--poachers are closing in on
- this rare animal, tracking it down even in China's nature
- preserves. During the course of her travels, the WWF
- investigator saw two panda pelts and was offered 16 more.
- </p>
- <p> That, however, was only a small taste of what was
- available through clandestine channels. At a village near
- Quanzhou, the WWF agent was treated to the sickening sight of
- 28 leopard skins, including six identified as the critically
- endangered Amur, believed to number only 40 in the world. The
- price: $380 apiece. Two taxidermy shops in Fuzhou offered more
- extravagant horror shows. "One had egrets, leopard cats,
- pangolins, slow lorises and eagles." The other shop contained
- "at least 100 animal specimens and must have had 500 birds--kingfishers, hummingbirds, everything." The owner, she
- speculates, "may have connections in the local zoo."
- </p>
- <p> The Chinese government cracked down on such trafficking in
- 1989, when it passed new wildlife-protection laws prohibiting
- hunting and trading of endangered animals, with stiff penalties
- for violators. Last year two panda traders were executed. But
- even the threat of capital punishment has failed to slow the
- poachers. Since the laws were enacted, more than 2,000 illegal
- killings have been reported, and enforcement of the measures is
- lax. "The government is interested in protection, but it has
- too many other things to take care of," explains one
- exasperated Chinese conservationist. Says the WWF investigator:
- "There is little effective control. Hunters told me they shoot
- anything they see."
- </p>
- <p> The illicit trade was spurred by a political event in
- 1987: the lifting of martial law in Taiwan. The result was a
- thaw in relations between wealthy Taiwan and struggling China.
- While the two countries remain officially estranged, more than
- 1 million Taiwanese have visited China, while 50,000 Chinese
- have sneaked into Taiwan for jobs. Such exchanges create
- opportunities for black marketeers, who have taken advantage of
- the new "mainland fever" sweeping the acquisitive Taiwanese.
- Black-market deals, particularly for pelts, can be conducted
- only through a series of middlemen. Each person provides an
- introduction to the next link in the human chain, then extracts
- a fee for the service. Ultimately the Taiwanese meet the Chinese
- on the muddy, gray waters of the Taiwan Strait. Often the pelts,
- along with Chinese antiques and traditional medicines, are
- traded by fishermen for Taiwanese electronics and consumer
- goods. The practice is so universal that when members of the
- Taiwan Coast Guard were asked by the WWF agent to estimate how
- many fisherman were engaged in smuggling, they laughed and
- replied, "All of them."
- </p>
- <p> Endangered species, a significant portion of the
- contraband smuggled into Taiwan, appeal to rich consumers there
- for a number of reasons. Environmentalism is a new and alien
- concept; Chinese society tends to emphasize the utility of
- animals. Exotic pets are status symbols, while pelts are hung
- in the homes of the wealthy. Eating elaborately prepared dishes
- featuring endangered animals carries mystical connotations of
- power. This is jinbu: if you eat a tiger's eyes, for example,
- your eyes are said to assume the acuity of a tiger's. Many folk
- medicines are made from the teeth or organs of exotic animals.
- </p>
- <p> Though China called for tougher application of its laws
- against the trafficking in February, it is doubtful the nation
- has the resources or the political will to mount a sustained
- enforcement effort. The willingness of many police officers to
- accept small bribes makes a mockery of legislation.
- </p>
- <p> The WWF hopes its expose will spur China and Taiwan, which
- has strict regulations that are rarely applied, to greater
- enforcement of their laws. The report recommends a crackdown on
- hunters and more funds for enforcement. But even if the
- governments commit themselves, it could be centuries before the
- animal populations recover from what has already been done. "It
- will take 400 to 500 years before any headway is really made,"
- says Hu Jinchu, an expert on pandas at the Nanchong Normal
- College in Sichuan. "We've wrested too much from nature."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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