Tibetan antelope by Yunke Li

Activists are warning that wild populations of south-east Asia’s striking tokay gecko are in danger of being over-hunted for use in traditional medicine in China and other countries

Photograph: Traffic/AFP/Getty Images

(Source: Guardian)

tigertimenow:

URGENT! Click through and sign the petition: http://bit.ly/StopTheEviction

Animals Asia’s Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre faces eviction from its site in Tam Dao National Park. The eviction would see 104 bears that have been rescued from the bile industry relocated, causing unimaginable physical and mental distress, and financial losses to Animals Asia of more than US$2 million.

We need your help to convince the Vietnamese Prime Minister to honour his government’s agreement with Animals Asia.

Join World Rhino Day on Facebook for the latest updates!

It’s World Rhino Day!

Bell, the slow loris. by Sham Jolimie on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Slow lorises are victims of the illegal pet trade, superstition and sadly of their own cuteness. Their sharp teeth are removed before they are sold. Their body parts are used in traditional medicine. Their habitat is disappearing. All this puts them in danger of extinction.

www.shamjolimie.jimdo.com

IVORY WORSHIP - Interactive.

1. Vanishing Elephants - Killing African elephants for their ivory is devastating a species that’s already losing ground to a growing human population.

2. Elephant Poaching - In 2011 poaching hit the highest level in a decade, with the greatest impact in the central Africa region.

3. Ivory Seizures - Most of the world’s countries agreed to ban international trade in ivory in 1989. Yet demand has grown in Asia, driven by new wealth in China. Ivory seizures represent only a fraction of what gets through.

Follow the link to the National Geographic site to see larger images and find out more.

The Survival of The Weakest by nicointhebus (nicolas monnot) on Flickr.

Every year, 200 million live animals pass through Heathrow. Most are part of the legal worldwide trade, but many rare species of wildlife are not. James Fair meets the team looking through your luggage. (Photos by Charlie Best)

 

In a small, nondescript office in the Animal Reception Centre at Heathrow Airport, CITES team officer Ann Ainslie points to some green bottles lined up on a shelf.

 

She picks one up so that I can clearly see the contorted, ghostly body of a small, hooded reptile staring at me with vacant eyes. It’s snake wine from Vietnam.

 

I check the label. “Usages: rheumatism, lumbago, sweat of limbs. Dosage: twice a day, each a small cup before meals.”

 

“Do people believe this works?” I ask Ainslie, incredulously. “Yes,” she replies. “But what they don’t realise is that they are fuelling the trade in that snake species. These wines used to contain Asian cobras, but they were too heavily exploited, so now the manufacturers use keelback snakes.”

 

Elixir of (wild)life

  

Another bottle, labelled “Hippocampus elixir”, contains a seahorse and a gecko. “Tonic for body, kidney, helpful for seminal fluid, good for health,” read the instructions.

 

It is easy to be cynical about the supposed benefits of these sort of concoctions, of course, but there’s another key point: importing some of them into Britain is illegal. Do you really want to purchase one of these potions, only for it to be confiscated when you pass through customs?

 

More to the point, perhaps, do you really want to contribute to the unnecessary and possibly unsustainable deaths of wild animals?

Many people, while travelling abroad, have probably been tempted to take home a wildlife curio that they believe to be no more than an innocent object of desire. But doing so can be a criminal offence.

 

For instance, it is illegal to bring back a piece of dead coral to any EU country, unless it is fossilised; the same would be true if you bought more than three conch shells, without the appropriate permits.

 

Importing a pendant made from the tooth of a great white shark has been prohibited since controls on the trade in this species were put in place in 2004.

 

Not-so-innocent mistakes

 

Trade regulations concerning wild animals deemed to be rare or of conservation concern are largely enforced through a global treaty called the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES.

 

At Heathrow a dedicated CITES team checks live animals and wildlife-related products detected by customs officers to make sure that they are not listed under CITES, or, if they are, that they are accompanied by the correct paperwork. If you have got a rare turtle hidden in your pocket, the team will be waiting.

 

‘Souvenirs’ that have been confiscated over the years include tiger heads, polar bear skins, tortoise shells, a pair of snakeskin boots complete with snake heads and packs of tiger-bone plasters. CITES senior detection manager Charles Mackay is cynical: “Put one on and it heals everything,” he says. “If you’ve got a severed arm, it will probably heal that, too.”

 

When I showed our photos of the packs to Rob Parry-Jones, European director of wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic, he pointed out that – though the ingredients list may tell a different story – the Chinese characters on the packet indicate that the tiger image is used for brand recognition only. The plasters are, however, claimed to contain ‘musk’ from musk deer, which also have a CITES listing. Not everything is as it seems in the complex and murky world of wildlife trade.

 

Horns and hoodia tablets

 

Mackay, a genial if slightly world-weary man in his mid-fifties, tells me that the British public is beginning to get the message that the trade in many wild animals and their derivative products is illegal. But there is still a huge problem on a global scale.

 

The explosion in demand for rhino horn has precipitated a poaching epidemic across many of Africa’s rhino range states. In other parts of the world, according to Traffic, the demand for wild-caught tortoises is rampant.

 

For example, 1,000 illegally traded Egyptian tortoises were seized by EU member states between 2002 and 2006 – a figure representing 13 per cent of the species’ wild population.

 

Mackay and his team see less of this type of wildlife crime at Heathrow, but are coming across more rare plants – many imported in various forms by traditional Chinese medicine traders. Traffic in wild orchids and other exotic plants is highly lucrative, too.

The teak forest of Gir is now the sole refuge for a big cat that hunted across swathes of Asia just a century ago. Luke Hunter considers the future of the Asiatic lion.

Sixteen years ago I hosted a delegation from India to South Africa’s Phinda Private Game Reserve. Led by Ravi Chellam, an expert on Asiatic lions, the expedition tapped into South Africa’s extraordinary expertise in transporting big game. Phinda’s forte was recreating thriving populations of lions that had disappeared decades earlier due to conflict with people.

By the time of our visit, the technique – scientists call it ‘wild-wild translocation’ – was so polished that restoring lions to their former range in southern Africa had become virtually routine.

Ravi’s team left with a wealth of insights into the complex business of rehoming wild lions. This know-how would be critical if their assignment was to have any chance of success.

The task? To establish a new population of the famed lions of India’s Gir Forest, the only members of the species left outside Africa.

Declining numbers

We tend to forget that, though lions are probably the ultimate symbols of the African savannah, they were once just as iconic in southern Asia. 

Roughly 2,000 years ago, their range extended across much of Africa and from modern-day Greece around the southern shores of the Black Sea, through the Middle East and Arabian Peninsula, and deep into north-east India. But as wave upon wave of human empires rose and fell across the region, the lions inexorably faded away.

Like most powerful, expansionist cultures, the Romans, Mughals, British and others were passionate about hunting – and large, dangerous carnivores such as lions were highly prized quarries.

By the end of the 19th century, the lions’ last North African outpost was in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, and their Asian range had shrunk to a few fragments in Iran, Iraq, India and, possibly, Pakistan.

The region’s leonine subspecies (Asiatic lions are genetically distinct from, and slightly smaller than, their African counterparts) was clinging to survival by the tips of its retractable claws.

Saved by a prince

By 1900, Gir held the last viable population of Asiatic lions, just two dozen strong. The district’s ruling prince, Nawab Rasulkhanji of Junagadh, was reputedly a great marksman who had hunted leopards, but fortunately he had no desire to finish off their larger relatives. Instead, he placed strict restrictions on hunting the Gir lions, a moratorium that would save them.

After its independence in 1947, India formalised the nawab’s edicts by setting up lion reserves on the southern tip of the Kathiawar Peninsula in Gujarat, starting with the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary in 1965. Later additions brought 1,450km2 under protection, and this tract of dry, hilly forest became known as the Gir Conservation Area.

In 2010, the lion census identified 411 individuals in Gujarat – though this tally is deceptively high: it included about 150 sub-adults and cubs, many of which will never reach breeding age.

Unique characteristics

To appreciate how close to oblivion the Gir lions came, one need only take a good look at their appearance. Most of them – males in particular – have a prominent ridge of loose skin along their bellies. A limited number of African lions share this characteristic, but its near ubiquity in Gir lions points to their genetic homogeneity.

Hunting forced the handful of animals saved by the nawab through what biologists refer to as a ‘population bottleneck’, causing inbreeding; today’s descendants are all closely related.

Size matters

Physical differences notwithstanding, Asiatic lions display much the same ecological hallmarks as African ones. Related females form the nucleus of each pride and defend stable territories from other matrilines.

Meanwhile, adult males – also usually related – establish small coalitions that co-operate to guard the females in their prides from rival groups. But, in Gir, everything is downsized.

Lion coalitions here normally comprise just two males, compared with up to nine (but usually two to four) in East and Southern Africa. Similarly, most prides in the Gir Forest have two or three lionesses, with six considered a very large number; by contrast, 4–11 lionesses is typical for East and Southern African prides, and some have as many as 20.

Gir lions of both sexes also spend much more time alone than their more gregarious African cousins.

Solitary splendour

The reason is food. As a rule, the larger their prey, the more sociable lions are likely to be. In African savannahs teeming with large herbivores such as zebra, wildebeest and buffalo, the need to defend big kills was probably a key factor compelling lions to band together at an early stage in their evolution.

A lone lioness on a zebra kill in the open attracts unwanted attention, so it makes sense to team up with related females: it’s better to share with family than to have your meal stolen by unrelated lions or other scavengers.

By the same token, small prey items are less likely to be lost to competitors, simply because they can be eaten faster. Sure enough, the main food of Gir lions – the chital, or spotted deer – is among the smallest preferred lion prey anywhere (a female chital weighs on average about 50kg).

Secret munchies

A further factor that keeps the Gir lions small is the landscape itself – the rolling hills and valleys covered with a dense mosaic of teak forest and semi-arid scrub help to conceal kills from other predators.

It has been suggested, based on these observations, that lion sociality in Gir is gradually breaking down, as if these cats are somehow becoming less leonine. But in fact this behavioural shift reflects the inherent flexibility of the species’ social system.

Asiatic lions are no less successful than the great prides of buffalo hunters in Kruger National Park, or the elephant-killing lions of northern Botswana.

Conflict… and recovery

Unfortunately, there is another parallel between India’s last lions and those in Africa: the ubiquitous presence of people and their livestock. Gir lions sometimes take domesticated buffalo and cattle belonging to the local Maldhari people, leading to inevitable conflicts in which lions are rarely the winner.

In the early 1970s, a radical policy was implemented. At the time, there were about 4,800 pastoralists and 25,000 head of livestock within the boundaries of Gir. But between 1972 and 1987, two-thirds of the Maldhari families were moved out of the area.

Though hugely controversial and plagued by long-term problems, this resettlement programme was, nevertheless, pivotal in saving the Gir Forest and its lions.

Livestock compete with native herbivores for food, and this pressure is exacerbated by the local people’s need to cut down trees for cattle fodder and fuel for cooking fires.

Before the resettlement policy, Gir held only 5,600–6,400 wild grazing animals – mostly chital and other lion prey such as wild boar and the larger sambar deer. In 2010, the estimate was nearer 65,000: a spectacular ten-fold increase made possible by the recovery of the forest.

But the human pressures are fast reaching boiling point again. Today, Gir is home to 6,000 people and almost the same number of livestock as in 1970 (herders and their animals have access to most of the conservation area, apart from the National Park at its heart). Another 100,000 people, together with their 95,000 cows and buffalo, live in villages on the forest’s boundaries.

Astonishingly, despite these changes, the lions have managed to establish satellite populations in wooded areas outside Gir, which now hold one in four of the cats. Most fragments of suitable habitat have been occupied, though, leaving fewer options for new prides to establish territories.

Human frailties

This brings us back to Ravi’s 1996 mission. After years of conservation initiatives that have filled Gir to capacity, there is still only one population of wild Asiatic lions. The endangered subspecies has yet to benefit from the translocation techniques learned in South Africa.

Gujarat’s neighbour to the east, the state of Madhya Pradesh, has been readying the Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary to receive surplus lions from the Gir Forest, which lies 830km away. Though the reserve covers only 347km^2, it is surrounded by a forested landscape 10 times that size, and so represents probably the last realistic hope for Asiatic lions anywhere outside Gujarat.

Madhya Pradesh and the Indian government have spent millions of pounds restoring Kuno-Palpur. As in the Gir Forest, this work has involved resettling villages (a total of 24 were moved), leading to forest regeneration and booming numbers of herbivores. All that’s missing is the lions.

Asiatic ambition

Sadly, they may never roam this reserve. The obstacles are neither biological nor socio-economic – the main reasons why large carnivore translocations are typically so challenging – but political. The state government of Gujarat refuses to part with its lions.

Depending on who you believe, its motives range from fervent Gujarati pride in its enviable record of protecting Asiatic lions, to maintaining its tourism monopoly over these handsome cats.

It’s a high-stakes gamble: small, isolated populations of animals are vulnerable to catastrophes such as disease epidemics. Without doubt, Gujarat has done a remarkable job of rescuing Asiatic lions from extinction – so much so that the felines have outgrown their only home in a century.

Whether their roars will still reverberate through the teak trees of Gir in 100 years’ time remains to be seen.

by Luke Hunter, President of Panthera

With wildlife crime now thought to be second only to drugs in terms of profit, Rageh Omaar goes on the trail of the ivory poachers, smugglers and organised crime syndicates to investigate the plight of Africa’s elephants.

As demand for ivory rises in the Far East, this Panorama special - made jointly with the BBC’s Natural History Unit - goes undercover in central Africa and China to ask whether the African elephant can survive in some parts of the continent. Last year saw the highest number of large seizures of illegal ivory for over two decades - despite a 23 year global ban on its international sale. One area of northern Kenya has lost a quarter of its elephants in the last three years - largely due to poaching. Panorama visits an elephant orphanage to see the impact of the killing on the young and, with access to Interpol’s largest ever ivory operation, confronts the dealers in Africa and in China - now the world’s biggest buyer of illegal ivory. The film hears fears that, unless China curbs its huge appetite for ivory, the future of the world’s largest land mammal could be in doubt.

BBC One, tomorrow, 9pm.

Animal smuggling has grown to a £6bn-a-year criminal industry, and is exceeded only by the drugs and arms trades. Its illicit profits are a major source of funding for terrorist and militia groups, including al-Qa’ida, and the snaring and slaughtering of animals is driving dozens of species to the brink of extinction.

These are the main findings from a month-long Independent on Sunday investigation into the growing scale and impact of wildlife trafficking – an illicit business which, thanks to huge profits and the violence to which it so readily resorts, is overwhelming the law and order resources ranged against it.

For all the international treaties, police units, campaign groups and NGOs battling it, the trade continues to grow. The world’s tiger population has plummeted from 100,000 at the start of the 20th century to below 4,000 today; 20,000 elephants are killed each year for their ivory; the number of rhino poached in South Africa doubled last year; sea turtles are being harvested at an astonishing rate, their shells turned into jewellery; and, over the past 40 years, 12 species of large animal have vanished completely in Vietnam. The trade takes its toll in human lives, too. Each year, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, more than 100 African rangers are killed, the men unequipped to cope with armed poachers.

Many people associate animal smuggling with small-time crooks trying to bring a few lizards in a suitcase to be sold by the under-the-counter pet trade. It is, in fact, a multifaceted business catering to huge demand among collectors for exotic species, ornaments and clothing, plus traditional Chinese medicine’s industrial-scale appetite for animal parts. Linda Arroyo, team leader at Sweden’s National Police for Environmental Crime, says widely held superstitions surrounding certain animal parts drive the illegal industry within Asia. “There are beliefs that rhino horns cure cancer, that if you drink out of a rhino horn cup you get eternal happiness, and that some of these wild animals raise men’s potency. The fact that the Asian economy is growing makes it possible for more people to buy these products.”

Bones, paws and penises of tigers and leopards are used as aphrodisiacs in Mong La, a northern state of Burma with a large sex industry, according to an extensive study of the big cat trade conducted by the wildlife NGO Traffic last year. Large vats of tiger-bone wine – which sell for between $40 and $100 a bottle – were being promoted as a health tonic in outlets catering to Chinese customers. Around the world, including in US Chinese medicine stores, bear bile is widely used to “treat” a multitude of symptoms from swollen eyes and haemorrhoids to skin lesions and fever.

The profits are vast. Beautifully coloured birds found in the Amazon basin and South-east Asia frequently command the highest prices. Lear’s macaw, an ocean-blue parrot from Brazil, is thought to be one of the most lucrative species on the black market. In 2008, it was reportedly trading at an estimated $90,000 per bird. Only 960 of the birds are believed to be left in the world. A single kilo of rhino horn was going for as much as $34,000 in 2009 – well in excess of legally traded precious metals such as gold. Tiger skins can fetch up to £20,000. A pound of tiger glue (made from the animals’ bones) was selling in Vietnam for $2,000 in 2008, while Tibetan antelope hair – known as shahtoosh – is made into shawls that can cost between $1,200 and $12,000 apiece.

But it isn’t just in Africa and South-east Asia where the cruel trade operates. Last August, Jeffrey Lendrum pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court of trying to smuggle 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs out of the UK. He was booked on a flight for South Africa with a 14-hour-stop-over in Dubai. He was arrested in Birmingham airport after a cleaner noticed him acting suspiciously in the toilets. The prosecution claimed an intermediary was due to take the eggs to an individual in Dubai, putting a value of up to £70,000 on the consignment. As the world’s fastest bird, capable of travelling at speeds of up to 150mph, it is popular in Dubai where falconry is a traditional sport.

Brian Stuart, chairman of Interpol’s Wildlife Crime Working Group and head of the National Wildlife Crime Unit, said that the two most recent Interpol investigations had recovered ¤35m from animal smuggling networks over three months. “In February last year Operation Tram recovered globally about ¤10m-worth of illegal products worldwide and we’ve still got inquiries initiated from that ongoing. The second operation [Operation Remp, covering illegally traded reptiles and amphibians] involved 52 countries and recovered in the region of ¤25m-worth of illegal products worldwide.”

With revenues such as these, majorcriminal and terrorist groups have long since moved in to control the industry. The Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), one of the world’s largest databases of animal contraband, found that nearly 2,000 more elephant products were seized in 2009 than in the previous analysis in 2007 – a sign of the increased involvement of organised crime syndicates.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 15,562kg of ivory were seized between 1989 and 2009, with 66 per cent of this collected in the last decade. Analysis from ETIS indicates three-quarters of this was obtained through organised crime rings. In Tanzania, the picture is even worse, with 68 per cent of the 76,293kg of ivory seized during this period being smuggled by organised crime. Forensic evidence has enabled scientists at the University of Washington to create “DNA maps” of African elephants and work out from which populations the contraband comes.

Elisabeth McLellan, species manager at WWF International, says that until law enforcement is strengthened, ivory will continue to leak out of Africa. “We’re not just talking small-time smugglers here; we’re talking hardened, organised criminal gangs.” A US congressional hearing on animal smuggling in 2008 reported that ivory en route from Cameroon to Hong Kong had been hidden in three containers with false compartments – clearly not the doing of local poachers.

Many criminal gangs have links to warlords and militias, and an increasing body of evidence suggests animal smuggling is being used to bankroll civil wars. In 2008, the trades in bushmeat and ivory were found to be directly supporting rogue military gangs, and providing economic support for several persistent pockets of rebel activity in the DRC, including the Hutu rebels implicated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Arms and ammunition were provided in exchange for ivory and illegal bushmeat during the second Congo war of 1998-2003. Somali warlord factions and the Sudanese Janjaweed – the militia group associated with the genocide in Darfur – have been identified in the poaching of ivory from elephants in the DRC and Chad.

On 15 May 2007, a failed Janjaweed attack that sought to capture Chad’s national stockpile of ivory at Zakouma National Park killed three rangers. Chadian authorities accuse the same Janjaweed of being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of elephants around Zakouma at this time. The same year, seven rangers from the Kenya Wildlife Service were forced to stand their ground against a gang of heavily armed Somali poachers. Three rangers and four poachers were killed in the exchange, which occurred in the middle of the night.

The sophistication of weapons used, the abundance of ammunition and the disciplined military tactics of the poachers all point towards them working at the behest of one of Somalia’s warlords. These, and terrorist leaders, are effectively acting as poaching gangmasters who exploit the poverty of local people. Civil strife, rampant in the African range states, also creates refugees, and these can have a detrimental impact on wildlife. Angolan, Burundian and DRC refugees living in the Meheba refugee camp in Zambia were persistently implicated in poaching in West Lunga National Park in 2008. Other extremist groups are also linked to the illicit trade. According to a report on transnational crime published by the Washington-based think tank Global Financial Integrity, at least two Islamic extremist groups are believed to have links to animal smuggling, among them the Harakat ul-Jihad-Islami-Bangladesh (HUJI-B) and Jamaat-ul Mujahedin Bangladesh (JMB). Janjaweed militants and Somali warlords in East Africa are thought to receive support from al-Qa’ida.

A wildlife expert with more than two decades’ experience examining the illegal wildlife trade in Africa, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “There is credible evidence they [Al-Shabaab, the Somali affiliate of al-Qa’ida] are involved in ivory poaching and rhino trafficking. This is serious business. [The army] is personally well armed and well trained and can cross hundreds of kilometres of land very rapidly. They know how to force-march, deprive themselves of water, and when they are told to come back with a dozen ivory tusks they do it.” The individual said that the most common weapons used by poachers were AK47 rifles, but G3 weapons – which fire bullets 500-600m, twice the distance of AK47s – had been found along with M16s.

While the black-market profits are enormous, the complexity of the smuggling chain is long and involves numerous intermediaries. At the bottom, poachers hired by syndicates capture or kill the chosen species. Poachers will typically be expected to spend an extended period in the wild, and are equipped by gangs with vehicles, weapons and – depending on whether the animal is to be caught dead or alive – training. Once caught, smaller animals are transferred to mules – humans paid to carry the wildlife either in a suitcase or on their person. Cross-continental journeys are a traumatic ordeal for the animals, with reports of birds being drugged and having their beaks taped shut. Nearly 80 per cent of birds die en route while the remainder are either maimed or severely traumatised by the experience.

One of the major obstacles to cracking down on the trade at the mule level is a lack of credible deterrents. Mules run the risk of being caught at customs or en route to airports and borders, but the penalties for animal smuggling pale in comparison with those for other forms of trafficking. A report by wildlife monitoring NGO Traffic last year found that those found in possession of protected species face a fine of up to £800 in Thailand and/or imprisonment for up to four years. In Burma a fine of up to £4,700, and/or imprisonment of up to seven years is applicable.

Compared with the sentences imposed for drug trafficking in the region – where possession of marijuana can result in the death penalty – such punishments are barely a deterrent. Late last year, Anson Wong, one of the biggest animal traffickers in the world, received a mere six months’ imprisonment and a £38,500 fine for attempting to smuggle 95 boa constrictors, two rhinoceros vipers and a mata mata turtle into Malaysia. By contrast, in 2000, the man dubbed the “lizard king” was jailed for 71 months and fined £36,500 for trafficking a menagerie of endangered species into the US.

The gangs frequently bribe border guards or pay organised crime networks to use their established smuggling channels. The criminals have been found to triangulate routes, falsify certificates and mix legal shipments of animals with illegal ones to confuse officials. A World Bank-sponsored report from 2008 found smuggling gangs using fake army and government number plates, funeral and wedding cars, as well as ambulances.

The effect on the countries from which wildlife is taken can be devastating. In South Africa, there have been reports of Chinese triads exchanging the raw ingredients for methamphetamine (“crystal meth” – known locally as “tik”) for abalone, an endangered shellfish served as a delicacy in Asia. According to a Wall Street Journal report in 2007, one pound of the shellfish was able to command $200 within Asia. Because drugs are the currency of payment, the exchange is virtually untraceable yet it is tearing apart the fabric of South African society. The International Narcotics Control Board’s annual report for 2010 shows that at least 30,000 addicts use more than a gram of methamphetamine per day in South Africa, and in Cape Town it is reported to be the primary or secondary substance of abuse among two-thirds of drug users. A 2005 study by the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in Los Angeles also found that it resulted in greater likelihood of unprotected sex among users in South Africa – highly problematic given the prevalence of HIV in the region.

Local tourism also suffers. With fewer and fewer tigers and other popular species left on the planet, countries that rely on international visitors to visit natural parks stand to lose out. Brian Stuart of Interpol’s Wildlife Crime Working Group says that the disappearance of species is bad news for communities dependent on the revenue from travellers.

“If there are no rhino or other endangered species in some of the range states in Africa, why would people want to go there?” he said. “If there are no ospreys or buzzards in the glens of Scotland, why would people want to come and visit? And if there are no fish in the rivers, why would the fishermen want to go there? Wildlife crime has an impact on rural economies and on the wider scheme of things.”

But far away from these countries, there are global health threats posed by the illegal trade as animals cross continents. Two parrots were seized at Heathrow airport in 2005 infected with the avian influenza virus. A year earlier, a man was caught trying to smuggle mountain hawk eagles also infected with the H5N1 virus. Because some diseases are able to jump from animals to humans, wildlife trafficking can pose a grave threat to health.

Yet in spite of the scale of the problem, there appears to be a lack of consensus among governments when it comes to proposing a unified response. Interpol’s annual budget for wildlife protection is a mere $300,000 – a fraction of the $86m donated to the WWF for conservation purposes last year. David Higgins, manager of the environmental crime programme at Interpol, based in Lyon, told The Independent on Sunday he found the level of funding low. “It’s like owning a car and not having enough fuel to put in it. You can still drive the car but you can never really drive it properly if you don’t have enough fuel. We’re not fighting a losing battle. I think we are just containing a little more than fighting,” he said.

Much can and should be done to combat the smuggling. Mr Higgins said that even with limited resources, the response could be enhanced if conservation and law enforcement groups pooled their knowledge. Awareness campaigns would be one way to enhance Westerners’ knowledge of whether a species is endangered and therefore illegal to purchase. At present, the internet can be used to advertise endangered species as legally traded species when in fact they are not, playing on the public’s ignorance. Tougher penalties with larger fines and longer prison sentences for the top-level criminals masterminding the trafficking chains and an incentivised whistle-blowing service would all help.

Until then, wildlife trafficking will continue to wipe out the world’s most precious species, destroying the lives of those around them along the way, bankrolling a bloodbath of civil wars and devastating local economies.

One hundred and thirty-five endangered South African rhinos have been poached so far in 2012. Demand for rhino horn in Asia, where superstitious beliefs have created a relentless trade, has increased rhino losses to an alarming level. In one area of Kruger wildlife park, 75 rhinos have been killed since January 1.

One possible explanation for the increase is the claim in Vietnam that rhino horn cures cancer, a claim that has no significant evidence. Rhino horn is made mostly of keratin, the same protein found in human fingernails and toenails. There is no magic cure for cancer that has been found, and killing rhinos is a tragic waste of life.

An Ohio University professor is studying rhino head anatomy to help determine humane ways of removing rhino horns from live rhinos to prevent poachers from doing so in a very destructive inhumane way. CT scans are done on the heads of deceased rhinos to gather data for the research.

“What the poachers want is that tusk. It would be bad enough if they just poached them and cut it off,  but they’re not even doing that in a humane way. It’s not a clean cut.  It’s like literally ripping, and the bone is connected onto the skull,” said the lead CT scanner. (Source: Athens News)

Rhinos in South African wild parks could be wiped out entirely in just several years if the current rate of loss remains constant.

Conservationists say hundreds of Indonesian great apes could be killed within weeks if land-clearing fires continue.

Hundreds of critically endangered orangutans in western Indonesia could be wiped out “within weeks” if palm oil companies continue to set land-clearing fires in their peat swamp forests, conservationists say.

“We are currently watching a global tragedy”

- Ian Singleton, director of Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program

Ian Singleton, a conservation director of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program, said on Thursday that the population of great apes was “just barely hanging on”.

“It is no longer several years away, but just a few months or even weeks before this iconic creature disappears,” Singleton said.

The population of Sumatran orangutans, who live in the Tripa forest on the coast of Aceh province, have decreased from about 3,000 in the 1990s to only about 200.

The forest is the most dense population of Sumatran orangutans in the world, with eight individuals per each square kilometre.

Although the forest is officially protected, almost half of the trees, that half a century ago blanketed almost three-quarters of Indonesia in plush tropical rain forest, have been cleared in the rush to supply the world with pulp, paper and, more recently, palm oil - used to make everything from lipstick and soap to “clean-burning” fuel.

Villagers in Borneo work to restore a disappearing canopy of trees where orangutans live [Al Jazeera/Steve Chao]

Singleton said that fires had sent orangutans fleeing, while some risked being captured or killed by residents.

Others orangutans would simply die, either directly in the fires, or of gradual starvation and malnutrition as their food resources disappear, he said.

“We are currently watching a global tragedy,” said Singleton.

Cloud-free images from December show only 12,267 hectares of Tripa’s original 60,000 hectares (148,260 acres) of forest remains, said Graham Usher of the Foundation of a Sustainable Ecosystem.

The rest has been broken up and degraded as palm oil companies drain the swamp, said Singleton.

He said that a total of 92 fire hot spots were recorded between March 19 and 25 in several of the surrounding plantations.

Her name is Green, she is alone in a world that doesn’t belong to her. She is a female orangutan, victim of deforestation and resource exploitation.

This film is an emotional journey with Green’s final days. It is a visual ride presenting the treasures of rainforest biodiversity and the devastating impacts of logging and land clearing for palm oil plantations. 

“I wanted to make people feel the pain and the sense of guilt” - Patrick Rouxel who produced silent film Green

Green the film has been show a lot in the media recently, so I thought I’d post a link again for those who haven’t yet seen it.