Burma-China Open Borders, Demand Keep Wildlife Trade Going

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

Forwarding you an article that I have just come across. This needs

to be looked into seriously, and should be made known to all who

simply ignore the following realities.

1. THE BURMESE CHINESE ALLIANCE TO WIPE OUT WILDLIGE FROM THIS

REGION.

2. RAMPANT INTERNATIONAL ILLEGAL BORDER TRADE IN WILDLIFE.

3. THE POROUS BORDERS OF INDIA AND ITS NEIGHBOURS.

3. THE GREED AND PRESSURE ON WILDLIFE FROM CHINA ON ITS NEIGHBOURS.

4. THE FAILURE OR IUCN, UNITED NATIONS, CITES, COUNTRY HEADS, AND

OTHER MONITORING AGENCIES TO PUT AN END INTO IT, OR EVEN TRY FINDING

WAYS OF STOPPING THE PRACTICE.

 

If this issue needs to be addressed the time is NOW.

 

I called upon everyone to focus into this region, I once again call

on evryone who gets this mail, to take a stand as and where possible.

The Asian countries just do not have any political will.

 

Azam Siddiqui,

Guwahati, Assam,

INDIA

 

 

www.mizzima.com (Specialising on Burma- related news and issues.

link: http://www.mizzima.com/mizzima/archives/news-in-2005/News-in-

May/18-May-05-33.htm

 

Burma-China Open Borders, Demand Keep Wildlife Trade Going

 

 

By Myint Zaw*

 

MUSE, Burma, May 18 (IPS) - Asked if he sees many wild animals in

the forests nearby, the head of a village in Shan state near the

Burma-China border quips, " You people from the big cities have a

better chance to see animals than us, because you have zoos and we

have an empty forest. "

 

The signs of the continued cutting of trees are obvious. Everyday,

dozens of trucks carrying varied sizes of logs head for the border

town of Muse in north-eastern Burma, for export into neighbouring

China.

 

" I travelled from Mandalay to Muse (463.3 kilometres and a twelve-

hour journey by car) and on the way I passed at least 40 trucks

loaded with heavy logs. I felt disturbed by what I saw, " recounts

Rangoon journalist Min Kyaw Soe about his trip to Muse, which

borders China's south- western Yunnan province.

 

These truckloads of logs reflect the changes at the border.

Biodiversity-rich Yunnan province banned logging in 1998.

Thereafter, many timber companies moved to the Burmese side of the

border, some clear-cutting in northern Kachin state.

 

Stories by truck and bus drivers in Muse of how they carry animals

into China show how the trade in animals persists, though not as

visibly as the timber trade.

 

A survey from the Yunnan-based Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical

Garde in the Chinese Academy of Sciences states that 900 individual

specimens -- big animals like tigers, leopards and bears as well as

small animals like tortoises, snakes and lizards -- have been

imported from Burma to Yunnan.

 

According to survey statistics from 1996 to 1999, 500 tonnes of

snakes from Burma were imported to the Chinese border town of Ruili,

opposite Muse, for food and traditional medicine.

 

Firm statistics about the international wildlife trade are hard to

come by, though global estimates in reports by the wildlife

monitoring group TRAFFIC put this at 15 billion dollars for all

wildlife including timber. Conservation groups say the illegal trade

reaches eight to 10 billion U.S. dollars a year in South-east Asia.

 

The wildlife trade here has thrived because of the porous land

border, the Chinese market for wildlife and huge profits that can be

made.

 

" Poverty pushes people to depend more and more on forests and

available natural resources, " says Kyi Win, a teacher from Kachin

state. But " to poor people, exploiting nature is just to get by.

They should feel guilty for this? "

 

A monk from Kyar Ye village, situated on the Rakhine mountain range

of Burma, believes that villagers do not live as simply as they used

to. " Formerly, they went into the forest just to find firewood. They

were not a danger to the forest animals large and small. Now, when

they go into the forest, they do not leave anything that can

generate money, " he sighs. " They always need money to make ends

meet. "

 

Improved road links and communication across the border have made

even poor villagers and hunters quite attuned to market forces that

help the illicit trade.

 

Mandalay, Lashio and Muse cities in Burma are now connected by a

smooth highway and this is a major trade route between Burma and

Yunnan. If people learn that there is a good price for pangolins in

China, they go hunting for them. Turtles and otters are rapidly

disappearing; pangolins and tigers are already extinct in most parts

of Burma.

 

Burma used to be known as home to the second largest population of

tigers in Asia after India. But the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation

Society (WCS) reveals that less than 100 big cats survive in the

wild in the country.

 

A dead tiger fetches offers of around 1.5 million kyat (1,500

dollars), according to a hunter from the Lisu ethnic group. " You

don't need to bother about selling. No sooner than you have killed a

tiger, a trader knows and comes with money to offer you, " says Yawi,

a 45-year-old Lisu hunter who lives near Lashio in northern Shan

state. He has killed 20 tigers, he says.

 

" If some plants and animals are in demand in China, it is sure that

they will disappear here soon as a result, " said Myo Win, a trader

from the Irrawaddy delta. " Once we had an abundance of freshwater

turtles in the delta. But my 10-year-old daughter has never seen a

live turtle. "

 

An owl, imported from a neighbouring country like Burma, will be

worth 1.6 yuan (20 U.S. cents) in Yunnan, but fetch 1,500 yuan (180

dollars) in the coastal areas of south and east China, according to

a China Central Television report.

 

" Some Myanmar traders. . . carry and trade anything that can

generate profit. So sometimes they will be a wildlife trader,

sometimes they will be a trader of any sort, " says Tin Than, an

academic from WWF Thailand.

 

Smugglers have different methods of going past checkpoints. One

trader reveals that he used to carry one tranquilised small bear to

Muse in his coat each time -- and has done this more than a dozen

times.

 

Smugglers use little-known forest trails to carry wildlife cargo to

China's border, and often give bribes to police and forest patrols,

says Than Htay, a former wildlife trader from Rangoon. Asked why he

is no longer a wildlife trader, Than Htay explains: " Wildlife is

very rare now, and soon will disappear completely. So I think I need

to move to a new job. "

 

Consumption in China, where some people take wildlife as food or

medicine out of tradition, drives demand. " Name any wild animal and

I will give you medicinal properties of that animal, " explains one

traditional medicine shop owner from the Chinese border town of

Wanding.

 

For believers in traditional medicine, tiger penis is an

aphrodisiac, tiger bone is for arthritis, pangolin meat is a

delicacy, pangolin scales are for skin infections, the slow Loris is

for wound healing. Most of these so-called healing properties have

yet to be scientifically proven.

 

But in Ruili these days, it is not as easy to find restaurants

specialising in wild game because local authorities had ordered them

to close down.

 

" Law enforcement is a sure way to change the consumers' practices

and stop the wildlife trade. I think fewer people will challenge the

law to eat wild game, " adds a Chinese border police offer from

Wanding. At the Wanding border checkpoint, a billboard in Chinese

and Burmese warns that carrying four-legged animals over the border

is illegal. Apparently, birds and snakes don't count.

 

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 put

immense pressure on the Chinese government to deal with the wildlife

problem by seizing wildlife products in recent years - scientists

believe that the SARS virus first emerged from civet cats in the

southern province of Guangdong.

 

Stricter enforcement of rules in China is good news for Burma's

wildlife. " We used to export a lot of snakes to Yunnan. But in the

middle of 2004, they suddenly stopped ordering and we lost our snake

export market, but we think it's temporary, " says Zaw Lin, a

wildlife trader from Mandalay.

 

" The people from the forestry department are doing a good job

protecting wildlife as much as they can, " says Nay Myo of an

environmental non-government group from Rangoon. He pointed to the

department's effort to set up wildlife sanctuaries in various areas

in Burma. It has 45 protected areas, comprising 5.4 percent of total

land area.

 

In the end, the monk from the Rakhine mountain range says,

environmental preservation is linked to values. " We inherit the

world from the previous generation and we should pass to the next no

less than what we received, " he says solemnly.

 

But " fine words about conservation are not enough for hungry

villagers, " argues a teacher from Kachin state, Burma. Adds the

owner of the traditional medicine shop in Wanding, China: " Why

should I abandon the traditional practice of saving human lives to

save an animal's life? "

 

(*Myint Zaw of 'Living Colour' wrote this article under the 'Our

Mekong: A Vision amid Globalisation' media fellowship programme,

implemented by IPS Asia-Pacific with the support of the Rockefeller

Foundation.)