British holidaymakers are unwittingly adding to the trade in endangered species by bringing back live reptiles, chunks of coral, and carvings made from elephant ivory in their luggage. These are just three of the top ten items seized by customs officers last year, according to environmental charity the World Wildlife Federation (WWF).
Top of the list of seized items were traditional Chinese medicines containing tiger parts, rhino horn or seahorse extract, followed by snake and lizard products such as handbags and shoes. They were just part of 163,000 illegal wildlife trade items confiscated by UK customs last year.
The news comes just as new studies confirm that poaching, much of it for the illegal trade, is further cutting the population of some endangered species.
India’s tiger population, previously estimated at 3,600, is now actually between 1,300 and 1,500, according to a survey undertaken by the Wildlife Institute of India. Poaching for the illegal wildlife trade and loss of habitat are the two major factors curbing the tiger, and many other endangered species.
One of the problems here is economics. The increasing scarcity of the animals has increased the prices that buyers will pay, and thus the rewards available to poachers.
Events in China illustrates this point. Though trade in tiger parts has been banned for 13 years, there is also a thriving illegal trade based on herbal medicines which promote the idea that consuming tiger-based medicines will imbue the consumer with the animal’s virility and power.
Having been unable to change that attitude, the Chinese authorities have allowed ten private tiger farms to operate, holding around 4,000 animals and displaying them to tourists. Conservationists, unhappy at the condition the tigers are being housed in, want these farms to close.
But China is now considering using the sale of body parts from tigers which die naturally at the farms to help meet the demand for medicines. Parts that would be sold include claws, bones, organs, fat and blood. The idea is that, by meeting demand from legal and sustainable sources, poaching will be undercut.
The WWF is opposed to this. As Indian-based environmental campaigner Belinda Wright said during a conference on tiger conservation: “China has repeatedly said that it wants to open tiger trade and promote tiger farming but we fear this will not help in conserving the species as it is cheaper to poach tigers than rear them.
“People anyway prefer wildlife species for medicinal purposes as they are considered to be more potent”.
This hasn’t been a good summer for conservation. Two unique species – the Chinese white-fin dolphin of the Yangtze river, and a sub-species of the northern white rhino of the Garamba park in Congo – are presumed extinct, as no specimens were found in recent surveys.
With rhinos, as with tigers, it is often poaching that is to blame. But sometimes governments do no favours either. The case of the Arabian oryx is a typical example. This endangered antelope is found in tiny numbers across the Middle East, and had been reintroduced in the 1970s to a World Heritage site in Oman. However, numbers have fallen from 480 to 68 since 1999, mainly through poaching.
However, according to Professor Alexander Gillespie of Waikato University in New Zealand, the fall in oryx numbers gave the Omani government a good cover to reduce the boundaries of the site by 90%, which coincided with its planned oil exploration on the area.
The site has now become the first ever to be delisted from World Heritage list by Unesco, the UN cultural body. Gillespie, quoted in the New Zealand Herald, said this was just what Oman wanted to allow unfettered access to oil.
Unesco says there are only four breeding pairs of the animal left, but ironically the Omani project’s own impressive website is still there, trumpeting the generosity and achievement of its patron. No-one seems to have updated it since 2003.
So if anyone offers you an oryx horn while you are on holiday, just say no
– from money.uk.msn
Please reduce your travel. Try to understand the tourism propaganda. There is no eco-tourism.