wildlife on a plate

[Guest guest]

Sunday Times - 12th May 2002

 

Special Report

Wildlife on a plate, as a pet or medicine

 

IN a restaurant at a secluded corner of Puchong, darkshelled tortoises trip

over each other and peer through the glass wall of their open-topped aquarium.

On the other side of the glass are

customers, looking at their dinner.

 

On today's menu there is also a monkey of unknown species, this reporter and

dinner companions were told. And if stories about restaurants in this area are

to believed, there could also be

pangolins, bear and tiger on occasions.

 

It may turn a stomach or two to know that the majority of offenders prosecuted

by the Wildlife and National Parks Department's enforcement unit has been those

serving endangered or protected wildlife as exotic food.

 

Its biggest case to date has been against a restaurateur from this area found

with parts of the following - a leopard's leg, a Malayan honey bear's leg, a

serow's head, nine leopard cats, eight

marbled cats, one linsang, 39 masked palm civets, 111 Malayan Flying Fox, a

barking deer's head, a lesser mouse-deer, a Malayan civet, a wild pig, meat and

bones of a pig-tailed macaque and a part of a monitor lizard. He was fined

RM9,000 by the court in 1997.

 

Enforcement director Khairiah Mohd Shariff said the department was apprehending

an increasing number of offenders but it was still fighting a losing battle.

 

With an expansive network and highly organised operations, hundreds of

smugglers still slip past the grasp of authorities.

 

The animals are usually trapped in jungles, villages on its fringes, or in

plantations by locals and sold to a middle-man for close to nothing.

 

The middleman who collects these wildlife from designated trappers sells them

to a dealer who transports the hapless creatures in a variety of ways.

 

As for transport, Traffic Southeast Asia programme officer Chris Shepherd said:

" After 10 years in Southeast Asia, I have seen it all - animals in crates,

hidden amongst non-protected species,

mixed with other animals that look the same and even elephants that have been

exported with false documents. " Snakes are packed into the tiniest

plastic-lined wooden boxes, birds drugged

to keep them quiet during the journey and packed in shuttlecock cases or neatly

arranged in one-litre soft drink bottles and hidden in hand luggage.

 

Khairiah said often, protected species were hidden amongst other exportable

animals as in the recent find at Port Klang where frozen pangolins were coated

with a twoinch thick layer of frozen

fish and tightly packed into wooden boxes.

 

She added that increasingly, smugglers were using land and sea routes, giving

authorities at closely watched airports the slip.

 

Most are carried under the cover of night to ensure a safer, smoother and

faster journey - part of the reason why the wildlife trade is second only to

the drug trade.

 

Not all wildlife slaughtered or smuggled end up on the dinner plate. Many are

sought after for trophies, medicines, consumer goods like handbags and shoes,

jewellery, perfume, souvenirs or

as household pets.

 

The pet trade is a lucrative one where protected birds smuggled from Indonesia

could fetch RM100,000 from a satisfied new pet owner.

 

Snake skins are sold for about RM30 a metre so that an average sized snake

yields about 10 metres of skin and rakes in RM300 for the savvy trader. The

meat of popular species like the

Malayan box turtle, retails for RM40 or RM50 per kilo when it is sold to the

final buyer.

 

Khairiah said often, trapped wildlife went from somewhere in Southeast Asia,

through Thailand and Vietnam, on to China - usually their final destination.

 

An article in the Lycos Environmental News Service reports that snakes, wild

boar and civet cats are eaten on a large scale in Shenzen, China. According to

a study there, Shanghai residents

consume more than 1,000 tonnes of snakes per year.

 

Some endangered species of wildlife are also used in traditional medicines in

some parts of the world. Pangolin scales purportedly disperse congealed blood

and reduce swelling, while the

Reticulated Python's skin may be used to treat ringworm, warts and rashes.

 

Traffic's senior programme officer Dr Peter Paul van Dijk said the highest

volume of wildlife illegally traded would be pangolins, fresh water turtles,

snakes and monitor lizards.

 

In terms of impact however, such trade has had the worst effect on the tiger,

rhino, painted terrapin and on sea turtles.

 

Traffic's Shepherd adds that there is also another category of endangered

wildlife to consider - those that could be disappearing but to which no one is

paying attention. These include the sun bear, sambar deer, fresh water turtles

and pangolins.

 

Both Shepherd and van Djik said Malaysia sorely lacked research on the wildlife

population here and therefore no one knows how much effort should be put in to

protect them.

 

" The more species we lose, the more our quality of life suffers...a simple

example would be if we lost the hornbill, we would lose many fruiting trees.

 

" Once we lose a species, we also lose a potential resource, even an economic

one like eco-tourism.

 

" Just imagine if we had had this attitude towards oil palm a long time ago.

 

" If it had been considered just some worthless palm and chopped down into

extinction, where would we be now?, " asked Shepherd.

 

Malaysians should be concerned, added van Dijk. " It's Malaysia's natural

heritage being sold off to profit a small number of individuals. A lot of

people think the trade benefits the poor who trap the wildlife but it is really

the middlemen who profit, " he said citing the example of villagers who earn just

10 sen per kg of frog when they are sold for many times the price to the end

consumer.

 

More tip-offs are coming from an increasingly concerned public, said Khairiah.

 

This could well be the result of thought-provoking awareness efforts like the

Asian Conservation Awareness Programme Malaysia (ACAPM) - a multi-media public

awareness campaign

to reduce consumer demand for endangered species products.

 

Spokespersons like action hero Jackie Chan and former Bond-girl Datuk Michelle

Yeoh make personal appeals on television explaining the importance of wildlife

in the larger scheme

of life and urge the public to ensure their consumption does not further

threaten already endangered species.

 

The ACAP partner here, the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS), has for the last

one-and-a-half years been running a series of awareness activities with

laudable results.

 

Citing an example, MNS scientific officer Stella Melkion said a series of

appeals on protecting wildlife featuring local stars was aired courtesy of TV3

and 45 per cent of people polled

remembered it and the message it carried.

 

Next year MNS, with the aid of Universiti Malaya will conduct a thorough survey

on awareness among Malaysians about wildlife.

 

While this spells hope for the future, much more needs to be done immediately

to arrest the illegal trade in wildlife.

 

Khairiah said the department was seeing growing co-operation from agencies like

the Customs Department which managed to stop and fine smugglers of wildlife to

the tune of RM244,291.50

between 1999 and 2000.

 

Still, many smuggled wildlife go undetected. Part of the department's problem

has been bringing the guilty to court and this is why it has turned to DNA

fingerprinting.

 

The technology will not only allow enforcement officers to identify the exact

species of animal that has fallen victim from a small amount of evidence, but

also link it to perpetrator and to the crime

scene.

 

In the case of restaurants offering protected animals on the menu, meat

confiscated from one could be used to find out the exact species of wildlife

that has been slaughtered, and if the meat is not

available, then the cook's bloodstained knife or apron would do.

 

As exciting as this new techology is, compiling a library of wildlife DNA

fingerprints is a long and arduous process that may take years to yield the

kind of results enforcement officers are looking

for.

 

What needs to be done immediately, said van Dijk, is to fully and forcefully

implement the law.

 

A case in point would be restaurants serving protected wildlife to customers.

 

When asked why these proliferated in the country and even around Kuala Lumpur,

seemingly under the noses of the Wildlife Department, the reply was: " We do not

have non-Muslim officers

who can go into such restaurants and order such food...it's difficult. " It's no

wonder waiters can still ask: " Monkey anyone? " o specialreports