Monday, May. 28, 1984
Adventures in the Skin Trade
By Anastasia Toufexis
Illicit traffic in wild animals and wildlife products is booming
In Singapore, government agents recently raided a farmhouse and seized 200 exotic birds, among them grand eclectus parrots, a Melanesian rarity in great demand by collectors. The entire collection of exotic specimens, worth $124,000, was being smuggled from Indonesia to Australia, the U.S. and Europe. In the U.S., a "sting" set up by the Fish and Wildlife Service, an enforcement agency of the Department of the Interior, uncovered a huge, Atlanta-based black market in turtles, lizards, poisonous snakes and migratory birds. From the tiny African nation of Burundi, which has a known elephant population of one, hundreds of tons of ivory are shipped each year. The tusks, say conservationists, have probably been smuggled in from Tanzania, Rwanda or Zaire, where virtually all ivory export is forbidden.
Despite more than a decade of get-tough policies by half the nations of the earth, illegal trafficking in wild animals and wildlife products is flourishing. According to experts at the World Wildlife Fund, the annual global trade of live animals, ivory, and skin-covered objects such as shoes and handbags runs between $2 billion and $5 billion. The fund contends that up to a third of these items are of illegal origin. Illicit trading has reached such alarming proportions that this week in Washington the fund's international president, Prince Philip of Britain, is announcing a vigorous new campaign to save endangered wildlife. The operation, endorsed by the U.S. Justice and Interior departments, will call upon industrialized and affluent countries to step up their efforts to police unlawful imports.
The task is formidable: smuggling ploys are varied and ingenious. U.S. Customs officials have found live Mexican wild parrots hidden inside hollow watermelons and one rare bird taped to a woman's thigh. In Elaine, Wash., U.S. officers arrested two travelers who had crossed the Canadian border with four gyrfalcons concealed in the wheel well of their car trunk. To make matters even more complex, drug smugglers have entered the wildlife export game. Officials are investigating one report that a cargo of 80 parrots sent from Bolivia to The Netherlands included up to two dozen dead birds that were stuffed with cocaine. One group of South American narcotics dealers is believed to have coated outgoing crocodile skins with pure cocaine. The smugglers assured port inspectors that the powder was a preservative, then later removed the coke with a vacuum cleaner.
Threatened animals are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as the CITES treaty. The pact, which took effect in 1975, has 87 signatories. The U.S. has two additional umbrellas: the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which bars the import of animals or plants on an "endangered" or "threatened" list, and the 1900 Lacey Act, which forbids the entry of plants or animals taken illegally out of another country.
Conservationists say that the laws are adequate but enforcement is poor. The U.S.'s 6,400 Customs agents, who try to prevent drug trafficking, currency violations and the export of high technology to the Soviet Union, have assigned low priority to the wildlife trade. Jokes a former Justice Department attorney: "They don't do much unless a tire with a grand eclectus in it falls in their laps." Regulation is often left to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which has 35 inspectors. This is an insufficient number even for spot checks on wildlife imports, which last year included 123 million tropical fish, 5 million other live animals, 8 million finished leather products and 12 million furs and reptile skins.
To make the job more manageable, the FWS has designated nine U.S. cities as official entry ports for wildlife. Freebooting traders, however, simply bypass them. For example, raw coral, used for jewelry and fish-tank decor, is barred from export by the Philippines. Yet in 1983, 540,000 lbs. of coral entered the U.S.
Wildlife traffickers often launder items: if a country bans the export of a species, smugglers spirit animals into a nearby nation that permits their export. An official of an accommodating government can be bribed to list his country as the origin of items. Says Paul Gertler, a biologist with the federal wildlife permit office: "Inspectors at ports of entry are put in the position where they have to take the word of another government."
As an example, conservationists cite Bolivia, which has an estimated 500 hyacinth macaws. In 1980-81 Bolivia exported 800 of the birds, each worth up to $5,000; wildlife experts believe that most were caught in Brazil. Sudan, which has fewer than 100 white rhinos, exports scores of horns annually. Prized as an aphrodisiac in the Orient, horns fetch $250 per lb.
The seemingly legitimate documents shielding these shipments make the illegal trade difficult to detect. But the World Wildlife Fund has recently helped the U.S. Government computerize international export-import records and has begun matching them with census counts of endangered species. Stopping the illegal trade in the future may depend not only on catching poachers in the act but on following the document trail they leave behind. Says the fund's Linda McMahan: "It's not just a cloak-and-dagger operation any more. It's becoming a complex paper chase."
--By Anastasia Toufexis.
Reported by Jay Branegan/Washington
With reporting by Jay Branegan