TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040891/0408330.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.8 KB | 137 lines

                                                                                ENVIRONMENT, Page 67

A Grisly And Illicit Trade


An undercover investigator in China reveals a shocking black
market in endangered species

By ANDREA SACHS -- Reported by Mia Turner/Beijing and Tad Stoner/
Quanzhou


    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.

    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.

    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."

    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.

    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."

    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."

    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."

    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.

    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.

    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."