BIODIVERSITY: Asia Acts To Pry Tigers From Jaws Of Extinction

• by Stanislaus Jude Chan (bangkok)
• Monday, November 22, 2010
• Inter Press Service

In particular, the region needs to put a stop to black markets along Burma, Thailand and China’s shared borders, which play a crucial role in facilitating the illicit trade in tigers and other endangered species, say wildlife conservation groups.

They raised this concern as the International Tiger Forum — the highest-level political meeting to ever discuss a single species — was underway in St Petersburg, Russia from Nov. 21-24.

'Illegal trade poses the most immediate and dire threat to the survival of tigers. Moreover, it puts all Asia’s big felines at serious risk,' says TRAFFIC South-east Asia regional director William Schaedla.

'Wildlife laws in Myanmar (or Burma) and Thailand clearly prohibit trafficking in tigers and other big cats. We urge authorities to bring the full weight of the law to bear upon traffickers,' he adds.

In collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Greater Mekong Programme, TRAFFIC South-east Asia launched here on Nov. 19 its ‘The Big Cat Trade in Myanmar and Thailand’ report, which documents black market sales of various body parts of an estimated 400 large wild felines during nearly a decade of investigations in Burma and Thailand.

The report is accompanied by a video documentary, ‘Closing a Deadly Gateway’, which includes interviews with poachers and alarming footage of butchered tigers.

'With as few as 3,200 wild tigers worldwide, the ongoing large-scale trade documented in this report cannot be taken lightly,' says Schaedla.

According to the TRAFFIC study, provincial markets and retail outlets at the Burmese towns of Mong La, near the China border and Tachilek, on the Thai border, played a pivotal role in the large-scale distribution of big cat parts including whole skins, bones, paws, penises, and teeth.

Ironically, it is the legendary prowess of the tiger that is leading to its rapid demise. From its traditional consumption as a 'folk medicine', says Schaedla, the tiger trade is now 'driven a lot by affluence, new money in Asia, and people picking these things up as in vogue or sort of trendy activities.'

'There is an urgent need to step up efforts if the region is to save its declining tiger populations. We need to enhance information gathering and ensure government and non- government agencies share information in transparent and timely ways from the local level to the regional scale,' says Dr Peter Cutter, coordinator for WWF Greater Mekong Region’s tiger conservation in Thailand.

Tiger populations in the Mekong region — including south- west China, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam — have plummeted from an estimated 1,200 during the last Year of the Tiger in 1998 to about 350 today.

'Alarmingly, the landscape between Myanmar and Thailand holds the greatest hope for tiger population recovery in this region,' says Cutter. 'But this can only happen if there are unprecedented and coordinated regional efforts to tackle illegal wildlife trade.'

'A critical part of saving wild tigers must be to shut down the illegal trade in tiger parts,' says Michael Baltzer, head of WWF’s Tigers Alive initiative. With all the tiger range countries convening at the 'groundbreaking' International Tiger Forum in Russia, Baltzer adds, 'illegal trade such as this must stay front and centre in the negotiations.'

The recently launched findings point to a flourishing illegal trade in tigers and other wildlife through Burma that thrives despite national and international laws. The majority of this trade occurs in areas out of government control between northern Burma and southern China, which makes it difficult to coordinate effective enforcement action.

To this end, the International Tiger Forum hopes to garner support to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022, unveil an international consortium to combat wildlife crime, and receive pledges to tighten protection by all 13 tiger- range countries — India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Russia, Bhutan, China, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Burma, Thailand and Malaysia.

'The bureaucrat can make a difference, a good senior officer in the district can make a difference, a park director who is excellent (and) knows what to do can make a huge difference,' says tiger conservationist Valmik Thapar in the ‘Closing the Deadly Gateway’ documentary. But, Thapar adds, 'Where are they? Why are they so few and far between? We’re all waiting.'

'We’re not under any illusions that we’re going to completely eradicate this (poaching and smuggling of tigers), but we need to disrupt it. And by taking out the big players we are disrupting it,' says Schaedla.

In Malaysia for example, Schaedla reveals, there are 'at least two' other big-name wildlife traffickers apart from Anson Wong, who in September was sentenced to six months jail and fined 61,300 U.S. dollars for illegally exporting 95 boa constrictor snakes. In October, Malaysian authorities also seized two Bengal tigers owned by Wong from his private farm in Penang.

Faced with poaching, illicit trade and land encroachments to make way for urban development, three of the tiger's nine subspecies — the Bali, Javan and Caspian tigers — were wiped off the record during the 20th century. The South China tiger, the parent species from which all tiger subspecies stem, is already functionally extinct in the wild.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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