Pakistan prepares for Saudi royal to hunt 'protected' birds

Yahoo – AFP, 2 Feb 2015

A falcon (R) tries to catch a Houbara bustard during a falconry competition,

 part of the 2014 International Festival of Falconry, in Hameem, 150km west of

 Abu Dhabi, on December 9, 2014 (AFP Photo/Karim Sahib)

Quetta (Pakistan) (AFP) - Pakistani authorities are finalising arrangements for a Saudi prince to visit its southwestern desert region to hunt the Houbara bustard, a bird supposedly protected by law, officials said Monday.

An advance party has already been reached the Yak Much desert in the province of Baluchistan along with falcons which will be used to catch the bustard, officials said.

Saudi Prince Fahd bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz is expected to join the group in coming days. He led a hunting party to Baluchistan last year that officials said killed more than 2,000 bustards.

The birds are listed as "vulnerable" and declining in numbers by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "Red List" of threatened species. Hunting them is banned in Pakistan.

But authorities issue special permits to wealthy visitors from Arab countries. Permit holders are in theory restricted to hunting a maximum of 100 of the protected birds over 10 days, but only in certain areas.

A Houbara bustard flies during a falconry competition -- part of the 2014

 International Festival of Falconry -- in Hameem, 150km west of Abu Dhabi,

on December 9, 2014 (AFP Photo/Karim Sahib)

Saifullah Zehri, district forest officer for wildlife in Chagai district of which Yak Much is a part, told AFP the advance party arrived on Sunday in a C-130 transport plane.

"They were fully equipped and had all the material which is required for bird hunting," Zehri said.

Arab sheikhs are known as enthusiastic hunters, travelling to Pakistan each year to hunt the bird using the traditional Arabian method. They arrive by private jets from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

According to conservative estimates, between 500,000 and a million birds of all species migrate through Pakistan each year -- flying south from Siberia to pass the winter in Central and South Asia.

Hunt: Fahd bin Sultan is said to have killed

1,977 houbara bustards in just 21 days while

on holiday

Related Articles:

Bustard act: Saudi prince accused of slaying 2,000 near-extinct birds while on safari in Pakistan (April 24, 2014)


Tanzania ditches plan to evict Masai for Serengeti 'wildlife corridor'

Botswana to ban wildlife hunting

Spain's King Juan Carlos poses in front of a dead elephant

on a hunting trip in Botswana, Africa. Photograph: Target

Press/Barcroft Media

Spain's king ousted as WWF honorary president

Spain's King Juan Carlos under fire over elephant hunting trip

Philippine Airlines Quits Flying Shark Fins Amid Outcry

Jakarta Globe – AFP,  Apr 24, 2014

A family eats shark fin soup at Vancouver's Grand Honor Chinese restaurant
 in Vancouver, British Columbia, in this file photo. Philippine Airlines (PAL) said
on April 24, 2014 it has stopped flying shark fin cargoes. (Reuters Photo/Ben Nelms)

Manila. Philippine Airlines (PAL) said Thursday it has stopped flying shark fin cargoes, joining a number of other Asia-Pacific carriers in taking a stand for marine conservation.

The fins are used in shark fin soup, a much-valued delicacy in Hong Kong and China.

Conservationists say booming demand for such fins has put pressure on the world’s shark populations, prompting calls for measures to restrict their trade.

“PAL values the issue on protection and conservation of endangered marine life seriously, recognizing that the company’s long-term interest is and should be consistent with sustainable and responsible business practices,” a PAL statement said.

Air New Zealand as well as South Korea’s two largest airlines, Korean Air and Asiana, separately announced last year that they would ban shark fins from their cargo flights, a year after Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific also stopped shipping them.

Fiji Airways announced last year it would no longer carry “shark fins and shark-related products sourced from unsustainable and unverified sources”, and would only carry fins from species not threatened with extinction.

Agence France-Presse

Related Articles:

Indonesia, India named as biggest shark catchers

New Zealand to ban shark finning

EU tightens ban on shark finning

China Bans Shark Fin Soup From Official Receptions

Hong Kong Bans Shark Fin at Official Banquets

Garuda Bans Shark Fin Transport on Flights: WWF-Indonesia

Fiji's Air Pacific bans 'unsustainable' shark fins

Korean Air Joins Cathay Pacific in Curbing Shark Fin Transport

Thailand seizes 104 smuggled endangered pangolins

France24 – AFP, 26 March 2013

A seized pangolin rests in a cage as another hangs outside during a press
briefing held at the customs department in Bangkok on September 26, 2011. 

AFP - The Thai navy on Tuesday said it had intercepted wildlife traffickers attempting to smuggle 104 endangered pangolins to China on the Mekong river.

The creatures, prized for their skin, scales and meat and hunted extensively in Southeast Asia, are believed to have originated in Malaysia or southern Thailand.

"The pangolins were on their way to Laos and then finally China," said Lieutenant Commander Garan Minwong of the Thai navy's Mekong river task force in the country's northern border area.

He said two suspects were arrested during the raid late Monday before they were able to load the live pangolins onto a boat.

Thailand, seen as a hub for traffickers of all endangered species, came under pressure over the rampant smuggling of ivory through its territory during Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) talks in Bangkok this month.

Ruthless crime gangs driving global wildlife trade

Channel Asia News, AFP, 09 March 2013

Poaching and illegal trade in protected species like elephants, rhinos and tigers
 has boomed into a billion-dolloar industry that threatens security and stability
 in many countries, the World Wildlife Fund warned Wednesday. (AFP/File
Rodger Bosch)

              

BANGKOK: Ruthless and heavily armed "criminal syndicates" linked to drug smugglers and militias are running the global wildlife trade and turning their guns on the park rangers tasked with protecting endangered species.

Hundreds of rangers have been killed over recent years as poachers stop at nothing in their quest for lucrative animal parts such as ivory and rhino horn, according to experts at a global convention on protecting wildlife in Bangkok.

The illegal trade "poses an immediate risk to wildlife and to people, including those serving on the frontlines to protect wildlife" says John Scanlon, secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

"It increasingly involves organised crime syndicates and in some cases rebel militia."

The death toll among the rangers has risen as the slaughter of elephants and rhinos reaches record levels -- with photographs of carcasses stripped of horns or tusks stirring public outcry.

At least 1,000 rangers have been killed in 35 different countries over the last decade, said Sean Willmore, president of the International Ranger Federation (IRF), adding that the real global figure may be between 3-5,000.

"There is an undeclared war going on on the frontline of conservation," he told AFP citing the example of a group of 50 rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo who stumbled across a 5,000-strong militia group out poaching armed with AK47s.

And while attacks by lions or elephants make their work "dangerous enough", he said 75 per cent of the dead were killed by traffickers, with their lack of equipment, training and low wages weighing against them.

Every weakness is exploited by criminals determined to cash in on large animal reserves in some of the world's poorest, most unstable countries.

"Wildlife crime has historically been known as a low-risk, high-profit crime," according to Ben Janse Van Rensburg a senior CITES official.

Alarmingly, the groups are part of a web of global criminals involved in other illicit trades such as drug and human trafficking, he said.

Although the countries worst hit by the scourge of wildlife trafficking have shown willing to tackle the issue, they do so with limited means.

But some countries have not even made the issue a serious crime "making conviction difficult", says Jorge Rios of the UN Office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC), urging political commitment to be "accompanied by resources at national and international level".

For poaching to be curbed those resources must be targeted at a the whole trafficking chain.

"We cannot just focus on poachers... we also have to deal with middle men working in transit countries, and people distributing and selling the merchandise in market countries," Dan Ashe, director of the US Fish and Wildlife service told AFP.

"We have to deal with people who are financing these operations."

But it is not an easy task, with corruption lubricating the movement of illicit wildlife -- often destined for Asia as delicacies or use in traditional medicines.

"They (traffickers) have a lot of money... they are paying for the right to do whatever they want," says Steve Galster, executive director, of conservation group the Freeland Foundation.

After several years of investigation his group accused Vixay Keosavang, an influential Laos national, of orchestrating a major trafficking network.

Tigers, turtles, pangolins, snakes and monkeys from Africa arrived on the banks of the Mekong river in legitimate breeding farms used as a front to sell protected or poached species, he said, highlighting the "loopholes" of CITES that have failed to stop people like him flouting the law.

- AFP/fa

 Related Articles:

International conference aims to protect endangered species

"Do Animals Reincarnate?" - NOV 22, 2010 (Kuthumi channelled by Lynette Leckie-Clark)

“... Perhaps this is a timely reminder for mankind to respect all life forms. All play a part in the consciousness evolution of man and the planet. As you prepare to enter a year of Unity, of stepping forward in respect of one another, I ask you remember the many kingdoms who also share the planet- the elemental, plant, mineral and animal. I ask you develop a new awareness for these. It is not all about you - the human. No it is not. You must now begin to awaken your consciousness to sharing - with all. For all is part of God's great creation.

Update from Ashtar via Mike Quinsey: Obama’s State of the Union Address – (Ashtar channeled by Susan Leland, February 12, 2013)

“… It is Freedom in every aspect of the lives of all humans on Planet Earth; it is Freedom for the animal and the plant kingdoms, and for the mineral kingdoms who are deemed to serve the humans. You know, it’s the humans who think all of the other kingdoms are here to serve. If you ask members of the other kingdoms what they have to say about that, they would take a different perspective and voice a different point of view which is true and appropriate, and as you like to say, it is high time because we are in High Times and we are continuing on this Path! ..."

International conference aims to protect endangered species

Deutsche Welle, 3 March 2013

A UN environment expert has warned that trafficking has put several species of plants and animals in danger of extinction. A conference under way in Bangkok aims to protect polar bears, rays and sharks.

Making that warning to open the 178-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), UN Environment Program Executive Director Achim Steiner cited an upsurge in poaching of Africa's endangered elephants and rhinos. He said the increase was driven by rising demand in Asia for their tusks and horns, saying that in some countries poaching has driven the pachyderm population down by about 11 percent.

"The backdrop against which this meeting takes place should be a very serious wakeup call for all of us," Steiner told delegates at a convention center in the Thai capital. Wildlife trafficking "in a terrible way has become a trade and a business of enormous proportions - a billion-dollar trade in wildlife species that is analogous to that of the trade in drugs and arms," Steiner added. "This is not a small matter. It is driven by a conglomerate of crime syndicates across borders."

"Blood ivory" will be at the top of the agenda during the global biodiversity conference, which lasts until March 14. The conference will look at about 70 proposals, most of which will decide whether member nations increase or lower the level of protection on various species. CITES has put 35,000 species of plants and animals under its protection since it formed in 1973.

‘Survival of the species'

"The UNEP year book, supported by data from CITES and its Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephants which is hosted by UNEP in Nairboi, indicates that the number of elephants that were killed in 2012 ran, as in 2011, into the tens of thousands," Steiner said in his keynote speech. "Meanwhile a record 668 rhinos were poached in South Africa alone last year."

At the time CITES formed, the African rhino numbered just 2,000. That number now stands at 25,000, but poaching has become more frequent again.

The culprit is largely demand from Asia, where their horns are highly desired because they are believed to have medicinal properties.

CITES Director-General John Scanlon said the slaughter of African elephants and rhinos "could threaten the survival of the species themselves," blaming poachers, rebel militias and syndicates for trafficking animal parts internationally.

"This criminal activity poses a serious threat to the stability and economies of these countries," Scanlon said. "It also robs these countries of their natural heritage, their culture heritage, and it undermines good governance and the rule of law. These criminals must be stopped, and we need to prepare to deploy the sorts of techniques that are used to combat the trade in narcotics to do so."

Help from the hosts

Thailand's prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, said she would amend Thai law "with the goal of putting an end to the ivory trade," delighting conservationists who have long urged the kingdom to tackle the rampant smuggling of tusks through its territory. Activists say criminals exploit Thailand's legal trade in tusks from domesticated Asian elephants to sell African ivory. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Thailand is the world's second-largest illegal ivory market, behind China.

Yingluck said that the animals are very important for the national culture: "No one cares more about the elephant than the Thai people., she said. " Unfortunately, many have used Thailand as a transit country for the illegal international ivory trade."

Without giving a timeframe, Yingluck said Thailand would establish tighter controls to curb illegal flows of ivory and ensure existing ivory supply is from domestic elephants before legislating for an outright end to the trade.

mkg/msh (AFP, dpa, AP)

   Related Articles:

US and Russia unite in bid to strengthen protection for polar bear

Google must drop ivory adverts say campaigners

African forest elephants decline by 62% in 10 years


Shark Fin-Hungry China Drives ‘Chaotic’ Fishing in Indonesia

A worker dries shark fins in a fishing port in Banyuwangi, East Java, in this
June 27, 2008 file photo. (Reuters Photo/Sigit Pamungkas) 

"Do Animals Reincarnate?" - NOV 22, 2010 (Kuthumi channelled by Lynette Leckie-Clark)

“... Perhaps this is a timely reminder for mankind to respect all life forms. All play a part in the consciousness evolution of man and the planet. As you prepare to enter a year of Unity, of stepping forward in respect of one another, I ask you remember the many kingdoms who also share the planet- the elemental, plant, mineral and animal. I ask you develop a new awareness for these. It is not all about you - the human. No it is not. You must now begin to awaken your consciousness to sharing - with all. For all is part of God's great creation. 

Update from Ashtar via Mike Quinsey: Obama’s State of the Union Address – (Ashtar channeled by Susan Leland, February 12, 2013)

“… It is Freedom in every aspect of the lives of all humans on Planet Earth; it is Freedom for the animal and the plant kingdoms, and for the mineral kingdoms who are deemed to serve the humans. You know, it’s the humans who think all of the other kingdoms are here to serve. If you ask members of the other kingdoms what they have to say about that, they would take a different perspective and voice a different point of view which is true and appropriate, and as you like to say, it is high time because we are in High Times and we are continuing on this Path! ..."

Ivory sales must stop or Africa's elephants could soon be extinct, says Jane Goodall

The conservationist accuses China of fuelling poaching, as tusks are smuggled out in diplomatic bags

Guardian, John Vidal, The Observer, Sunday 16 December 2012

Elephants in the Masai Maara reserve in Kenya. Photograph: Anup Shah/
Anup Shah/Corbis

Jane Goodall, one of the world's greatest conservationists, has made an impassioned plea for a worldwide ban on the sale of ivory to prevent the extinction of the African elephant.

Her call follows the seizure in Malaysia last week of 24 tonnes of illegal ivory and a report by conservationists warning that the illegal ivory trade now threatens governments as rebel groups use the sale of tusks to fund their wars.

"A massive tragedy is unfolding in some parts of Africa. This is desperately serious, unprecedented," she said. "We believe that Tanzania has lost half its elephants in the last three years. Ugandan military planes have been seen over the Democratic Republic of the Congo shooting elephants from the air. Armed militia are now shooting the elephants."

She accused China of being ultimately responsible, because most of the ivory is sent there to be made into ornaments. "The main market is China and the east. The ivory appears to be smuggled out in the Chinese diplomatic pouches or in unmarked planes, or it is smuggled over the border to DR Congo. Armed gangs and rangers are joining in the smuggling or are getting killed. I fear we are losing the battle in some countries. It's shocking," she said.

China's growing presence in Africa has been blamed for an unprecedented surge in poaching. The discovery last week by Malaysian customs of 1,500 tusks hidden in secret chambers in 10 containers supposedly carrying wooden floor tiles was the largest illegal ivory haul ever, roughly equivalent to all the illegal ivory seized last year.

The containers were reportedly on their way to China via Spain from Togo, a popular destination for armed gangs to smuggle ivory. It follows the discovery in Hong Kong in October of nearly 1,000 pieces of ivory tusks from Tanzania and the discovery of more than 200 tusks in Tanzania itself.

Goodall, who became famous for her work as a primatologist working with chimpanzees in Africa, compared the deteriorating situation with elephants to the drastic decline of primate populations in the past 40 years. "We are seeing the devastation of populations of elephants in many countries. It's a similar situation to the great apes. Everyone should be concerned. We are fighting for a total worldwide ban on the sale of all ivory."

She said that she would be campaigning with David Attenborough to persuade the UN to ban ivory sales. "The world must wake up. Governments need to tighten up. No one anywhere should buy any ivory. Countries must be helped to reinforce controls on poaching," said Goodall.

A report submitted to the UN last week by WWF International warned that the illegal ivory trade threatened Africa's governments as rebel groups used the sale of tusks to fund their wars. "This is about much more than wildlife. This crisis is threatening the very stability of governments. It has become a profound threat to national security," said Jim Leape, director-general of WWF International.

Poaching in some countries is said to be out of control. In southern Sudan the elephant population, estimated at 130,000 in 1986, has crashed to 5,000, said World Conservation Society director Paul Elkan. "Within the next five years, they could completely be gone with the current rates of poaching. Even security forces are involved in trafficking," he said.

Conservationists blamed the Tanzanian authorities for not controlling ivory poaching and trafficking. "There's an enormous slaughter of elephants going on in Tanzania right now. Things are out of hand," said the veteran conservationist Iain Douglas-Hamilton. "There's no protection in numbers for elephants, any more than there was for bison in the last century when they were all wiped out in America. So people shouldn't kid themselves."

Tanzania, with 70,000-80,000 elephants in 2009, is thought to have nearly a quarter of all African elephants. But Peter Msigwa, a Tanzanian MP, said last week that poaching was "out of control" with an average of 30 elephants being slaughtered for their ivory every day.

"At the end of the year, you're talking about 10,000 elephants killed," said James Lembeli, chairman of Tanzania's natural resources committee. "Move around this country where you have populations of elephants and [you see] carcasses everywhere," he said.

Last year Tanzanian police seized more than 1,000 elephant tusks hidden in sacks of dried fish at Zanzibar port.

In June the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species described the plight of Africa's elephants as "critical" and said that elephant poaching had reached its highest level for a decade, with tens of thousands killed for their tusks each year.

Malaysian customs officers display elephant tusks that were
recently seized in Port Klang, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Photograph: AP

Related Articles:

Malaysia seizes 1,500 elephant tusks headed for China

Illegal wildlife trade 'threatening national security', says WWF

In pictures: Wildlife crime

S.Africa, Vietnam agree to curb rhino horn trade

S.Africa, Vietnam agree to curb rhino horn trade

Google – AFP, 10 December 2012

An adult white rhino looks on at the Entabeni Safari Conservancy, north east

of Johannesburg (AFP/File, Stephane de Sakutin)

HANOI — Vietnam and South Africa signed a deal Monday to tackle rhino poaching and the lucrative illicit trade in the creature's horns for use in traditional medicine, government officials and activists said.

Illegal hunting of South Africa's rhinos has risen in recent years to meet surging demand for their horns in East Asia, in particular Vietnam where they are highly prized for their supposed medicinal qualities.

Fighting wildlife crime "especially on the rare, precious and endangered species including rhinos (is) always of concern to the Vietnam government", Minister of Agriculture Cao Duc Phat said in a statement.

The minister vowed to seek a total ban on the import of all rhino products, according to the statement released after the signing ceremony in Hanoi.

Global wildlife activists have been pushing Vietnam to tackle the illegal rhino horn trade, which is popular among the Southeast Asian nation's elite who can afford the estimated $5,000 it costs for each 100-gram chunk sold.

The deal, which is partly a result of heavy lobbying by activists, covers cooperation in biodiversity management and conservation and refers only in general terms to addressing illegal wildlife smuggling.

But conservation groups welcomed the move.

The deal marks "a turning point in efforts to protect Africa's rhinos," said Stuart Chapman, of the WWF in the Greater Mekong.

"South Africa and Vietnam have publicly signalled their intention to get tough on the criminal syndicates behind the rhino poaching spree," Chapman said in a statement after the deal was signed.

More than 600 rhinos have been poached across South Africa since the start of the year, according to official South African sources.

Many of their horns are suspected to have been smuggled to Vietnam.

South Africa is home to about three-quarters of Africa's 20,000 or so white rhinos and 4,800 critically endangered black rhinos.

Hong Kong makes largest ivory seizure worth $3.4m

BBC News, 20 October 2012

Related Stories 

• Record Hong Kong rhino horn haul
• South African rhino deaths rise
• Kenya makes massive ivory seizure

Ivory tusks are used in traditional
medicine in Asia

Hong Kong customs officials say they have confiscated nearly four tonnes of smuggled ivory - their largest seizure of products from endangered species.

The haul - worth about $3.4m (£2.1m) - was hidden in two separate containers from Kenya and Tanzania.

The seizure followed a tip-off from mainland Chinese police, who have since arrested seven people.

A recent rise in the illegal trade in ivory has been fuelled by demand in Asia and the Middle East.

Ivory tusks are used in traditional medicine there and to make ornaments.

'Plastic scrap'

"This is the biggest haul of ivory tusk in Hong Kong customs enforcement history in a single operation," Lam Tak-fai, head of Hong Kong's Ports and Maritime Command, announced on Saturday.

The customs officials said that the ivory tusks - as well as ivory ornaments - had been discovered on Tuesday and Wednesday.

They said that the containers from Kenya and Tanzania had been marked "plastic scrap".

The latest seizure tops the one in 2011 worth $2m.

Under Hong Kong's law, those guilty of trading in endangered species products face up to two years in jail and a huge fine.

The international trade in ivory has been banned since 1989, to protect Africa's dwindling elephant population.

Conservationist have linked China's growing involvement in Africa with a rise in poaching elephant tusks.

Untouchables: Southeast Asia’s Biggest Wildlife Traffickers

Jakarta Globe, August 15, 2012

Customs officials show smuggled elephant tusks at airport customs in
 Bangkok on July 17, 2012. Thai Customs seized a shipment from Kenya of
 158 pieces African elephant tusks, weighing 456.12 kilograms and with an
 estimated value of 22.80 million Thai baht ($722,000). (EPA Photo/
Narong Sangnak)

Bangkok. Squealing tiger cubs stuffed into carry-on bags. Luggage packed with hundreds of squirming tortoises, elephant tusks, even water dragons and American paddlefish. Officials at Thailand’s gateway airport proudly tick off the illegally trafficked wildlife they have seized over the past two years.

But Thai and foreign law enforcement officers tell another story: Officials working hand-in-hand with traffickers ensure that other shipments through Suvarnabhumi International Airport are whisked off before they even reach customs inspection.

It’s a murky mix. A 10-fold increase in wildlife law enforcement actions, including seizures, has been reported in the past six years in Southeast Asia. Yet, the trade’s Mr. Bigs, masterful in taking advantage of pervasive corruption, appear immune to arrest and continue to orchestrate the decimation of wildlife in Thailand, the region and beyond.

And Southeast Asia’s honest cops don’t have it easy.

“It is very difficult for me. I have to sit among people who are both good and some who are corrupt,” says Chanvut Vajrabukka, a retired police general who now advises Asean-Wen, the regional wildlife enforcement network. “If I say, ‘You have to go out and arrest that target,’ some in the room may well warn them.”

Several kingpins, says wildlife activist Steven Galster, have recently been confronted by authorities, “but in the end, good uniforms are running into, and often stopped by bad uniforms. It’s like a bad Hollywood cop movie.

“Most high-level traffickers remain untouched and continue to replace arrested underlings with new ones,” says Galster, who works for the Freeland Foundation, an anti-trafficking group.

Galster, who earlier worked undercover in Asia and elsewhere, heaps praise on the region’s dedicated, honest officers because they persevere knowing they could be sidelined for their efforts.

Recently, Lt. Col. Adtaphon Sudsai, a highly regarded and outspoken officer, was instructed to lay off what had seemed an open-and-shut case he cracked four years ago when he penetrated a gang along the Mekong River smuggling pangolin.

This led him to Daoreung Chaimas, alleged by conservation groups to be one of Southeast Asia’s biggest tiger dealers. Despite being arrested twice, having her own assistants testify against her and DNA testing that showed two cubs were not offsprings from zoo-bred parents as she claimed, Daoreung remains free and the case may never go to the prosecutor’s office.

“Her husband has been exercising his influence,” says Adtaphon, referring to her spouse, who is a police officer. “It seems that no policeman wants to get involved with this case.” The day the officer went to arrest her the second time, his transfer to another post was announced.

“Maybe it was a coincidence,” the colonel says.

In another not uncommon case, a former Thai police officer who tried to crack down on traders at Bangkok’s vast Chatuchak Market got a visit from a senior police general who told him to “chill it or get removed.”

“I admit that in many cases, I cannot move against the big guys,” Chanvut, the retired general, notes. “The syndicates like all organized crime are built like a pyramid. We can capture the small guys but at the top they have money, the best lawyers, protection. What are we going to do?”

Chanvut’s problems are shared by others in Southeast Asia, the prime funnel for wildlife destined for the world’s No. 1 consumer — China — where many animal parts are consumed in the belief they have medicinal or aphrodisiacal properties.

Most recently, a torrent of rhino horn and elephant tusks has poured through it from Africa, which suffers the greatest slaughter of these two endangered animals in decades.

Vietnam was singled out last month by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as the top destination country for the highly prized rhino horn.

Tens of thousands of birds, mostly parrots and cockatoos plucked from the wild, are being imported from the Solomon Islands into Singapore, often touted as one of Asia’s least corrupt nations, in violation of Cites, the international convention on wildlife trade.

 According to Traffic, the international body monitoring wildlife trade, the imported birds are listed as captive-bred, even though it is widely known that the Pacific Ocean islands have virtually no breeding facilities.

Communist Laos continues to harbor Vixay Keosavang, identified as one of the region’s half dozen Mr. Bigs, who has been linked by the South African press to a rhino smuggling ring. The 54-year-old former soldier and provincial official is reported to have close ties to senior government officials in Laos and Vietnam.

Thai and foreign enforcement agents, who insist on anonymity since most work undercover, say they have accumulated unprecedented details of the gangs, which are increasingly linked to drug and human trafficking syndicates.

They say a key Thai smuggler, who runs a shipping company, has a gamut of law enforcement officers in his pocket, allowing him to traffic rhino horns, ivory and tiger parts to China. He frequently entertains his facilitators at a restaurant in his office building.

According to the agents, Chinese buyers, informed of incoming shipments, fly to Bangkok, staying at hotels pinpointed by the agents around the Chatuchak Market, where endangered species are openly sold. There they seal deals with known middlemen and freight operators.

The sources say that when they report such investigations seizures are either made for “public relations,” sink into a “black hole” — or the information is leaked to the wrongdoers.

Such a tip-off from someone at Bangkok airport customs allowed a trafficker to stop shipment of a live giraffe with powdered rhino horn believed to be implanted in its vagina.

“The 100,000 passengers moving through this airport from around the world everyday are oblivious to the fact that they are standing in one of the world’s hottest wildlife trafficking zones,” says Galster.

Officials interviewed at the airport, one of Asia’s busiest, acknowledge corruption exists, but downplay its extent and say measures are being taken to root it out.

Chanvut says corruption is not the sole culprit, pointing out the multiple agencies that often don’t cooperate or share information. Each with a role at Bangkok’s airport, are the police, national parks department, customs, immigration, the military and Cites, which regulates international trade in endangered species.

With poor communication between the police and immigration, for example, a trader whose passport has been seized at the airport can obtain a forged one and slip across a land border a few days later.

Those arrested frequently abscond by paying bribes or are fined and the case closed without further investigation. “Controlled delivery,” effectively penetrating networks by allowing illicit cargo to pass through to its destination, is rare.

Thailand’s decades-old wildlife law also awaits revision and the closing of loopholes, such as the lack of protection for African elephants, and far stiffer penalties.

“The bottom line is that if wildlife traffickers are not treated as serious criminals in Southeast Asia we are just going to lose more wildlife,” says Chris Shepherd, Traffic’s Southeast Asia deputy director. “How often is anyone arrested? They just run off, they must be the fastest people on earth.”

Chalida Phungravee, who heads the cargo customs bureau at Suvarnabhumi, says just the sheer scale makes her job difficult. The airport each year handles 45 million passengers and 3 million tons of cargo, only some 3 percent of which is X-rayed on arrival. The main customs warehouse is the size of 27 football fields.

But seizures are made, she said, including boxes of tusks — the remnants of some 50 felled elephants — aboard a recent Kenya Airlines flight declared as handicrafts and addressed to a nonexistent company.

“We have cut down a lot on corruption. It still exists but remains minimal,” she said, citing recent computerization which has created a space, dubbed “the Green Line,” between customs officials, cargo and traffickers.

Galster says unlike the past, traffickers are no longer guaranteed safe passage, describing a daily battle at Suvarnabhumi with “undercover officers monitoring corrupt ones and smugglers trying to outwit them all.”

Such increased enforcement efforts in the region have slowed decimation of endangered species, he says, “but there is still a crash going on. If corruption is not tackled soon, you can say goodbye to Asia’s tigers, elephants and a whole host of other animals.”

Associated Press

Related Article:

Dutch vet fights South African rhino poachers

Hong Kong Airline Bans Dolphin Cargo: Activists

Jakarta Globe, March 01, 2012

A child watches dolphin at Batang Dolphin Center in Safari Park, Batang,
Central Java. Hong Kong Airlines has pledged to end flights where live
dolphins are transported in shallow tanks. (JG Photo/Ali Lutfi)

               

Related articles

• Australian Abattoir Shut Down Over Animal Abuse
• Court to Decide if SeaWorld Whales Are Illegal ‘Slaves’
• Australian Rips Head Off Kitten in Suburban Dispute
• Philippine Police Rescue Dogs, Raid Slaughterhouse
• US Man Gets10 Years for Choke, Sexual Assault on Dog

Hong Kong. A Hong Kong airline has promised to stop transporting live dolphins after coming under heavy criticism from animal welfare activists, conservationists said on Wednesday.

More than 6,500 people have signed an online petition urging Hong Kong Airlines to stop the business, revealed when an internal memo about a recent delivery from Japan to Vietnam was leaked to Chinese media.

“Hong Kong Airlines wishes to convey that it is a responsible member of the transport industry caring for the future and environment,” the airline said in a letter to animal welfare groups dated Wednesday.

“Since it is believed that transportation of this nature can result in endangering wildlife elsewhere, Hong Kong Airlines will immediately ban shipments of this kind,” the letter stated.

A copy of the letter was posted on US-based conservation group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Web site. Representatives from the group have written to the airline denouncing the dolphin shipment.

Hong Kong Airlines declined to comment.

“This action should send a message to all airlines that the consequences of transporting dolphins will result in such global negative publicity as to affect a loss of business that will far outweigh any short-term financial gain from the transfers,” Sea Shepherd Hong Kong coordinator Gary Stokes said.

The airline has said it complied with government rules and the International Air Transport Association regulations on live animal transportation during the January 16 delivery of the five dolphins from Osaka to Hanoi.

The dolphins are believed to have come from the Japanese town of Taiji, the scene of an annual dolphin slaughter depicted in Oscar Award winning documentary “The Cove,” said China Daily, which first reported on the delivery.

The leaked memo said the flight earned 850,000 Hong Kong dollars ($110,000) in cargo revenue. The China Daily report included a photograph of the dolphins lying in shallow, narrow containers inside the belly of a Boeing 733F cargo plane.

Agence France-Presse

Related Article:

Dolphin cargo puts airline in hot water

Australian Abattoir Shut Down Over Animal Abuse

Jakarta Globe, February 10, 2012

Related articles

• Shocking Images Show Animal Cruelty in Australian Slaughterhouse
• Court to Decide if SeaWorld Whales Are Illegal ‘Slaves’
• Australian Rips Head Off Kitten in Suburban Dispute
• Indonesian Military Officers Named Suspects in Asylum Voyage Disaster
• Concern as Indonesian Monkeys Relocated to Research Breeding Center

Sydney. An Australian abattoir has been shut down after footage emerged showing "gross mistreatment" of animals, less than a year after Canberra suspended its live cattle trade to Indonesia due to cruelty concerns.

Australia abruptly froze all cattle exports

 to Indonesia last June over animal welfare

issues (AFP/Illustration, Adek Berry)

Regulators late on Thursday said they had stopped the slaughter of animals at the Sydney plant after viewing images of sheep, cattle, goats and pigs being killed, including pigs being smashed on the head with a metal bar.

"There is no denying that the footage is disturbing. I'm shocked. I think it is the worst case I've seen in an abattoir in terms of animal welfare breaches," the New South Wales state Food Authority's Peter Day told reporters.

The incident comes after Australia abruptly froze all cattle exports to Indonesia last June over animal welfare issues, when state broadcaster ABC showed images of animals being kicked and mistreated in Indonesian abattoirs ahead of slaughter.

Trade was reinstated several weeks later after Jakarta agreed to a strict new permit system requiring exporters and slaughterhouses to guarantee animal welfare standards, but the Australian cattle industry was badly impacted.

In the latest incident, footage shown on the ABC showed a worker repeatedly hitting a pig on the head with a metal bar, while another pig was beaten several times because it had not been stunned adequately beforehand.

Day said the footage was not representative of the industry as a whole, describing the incident as a "rogue" action which was in no way compliant with what was expected of abattoirs.

The abattoir, Hawkesbury Valley Meat Processors, said the casual staff involved had been sacked or given other duties, adding it would cooperate with an ongoing investigation into the allegations.

But the issue has again highlighted the treatment of animals in slaughterhouses, with animal advocates calling for closed circuit television cameras in Australian abattoirs to prevent any mistreatment.

"One of the problems is that unlike export abattoirs, domestic abattoirs don't have an inspector or government officer on site most of the time," Animals Australia's Lyn White said. "Only the presence of cameras will actively discourage workers from engaging in such wanton acts of gross cruelty."

Australian law requires that "animals are slaughtered in a way that prevents unnecessary injury, pain and suffering to them and causes them the least practical disturbance". Fines of up to Aus$110,000 (US$118,280) or jail sentences of two years apply for acts of aggravated cruelty to animals.

Agence France-Presse

Related Articles:

Australia lifts ban on Indonesia live-cattle exports

Indonesia, Australia need to agree on slaughterhouse standards: minister
Australians shun beef after Indonesia abattoir film
Indonesian animal treatment certainly not kosher

Dutch move to ban slaughter of livestock which hasn't been stunned

Culture clash over ritual slaughter ban


Do Animals Reincarnate? - NOV 22, 2010 (Kuthumi channeled by Lynette Leckie-Clark)

"The Akashic System of Remembrance" - Sep 2010 (Kryon Channeling) - Reference to Whales/Dolphins/Animals/Pets > 28:00 min

"Animals Consciousness: The Divine of Cats & Dogs" - JUL 31, 2011 (Metraton channelled by Tyberonn)