A Grisly And Illicit Trade

By Andrea Sachs

The Chinese man with the cruel face was adamant. He would not show the visitor the panda pelt being offered for sale without a $10,000 deposit. But perhaps she would be interested in a better deal: two live young pandas, chained and ready to go, for just $112,000. Of course, he had leopard and tiger pelts as well, if she were interested. Eight smugglers gathered around them in the dimly lighted, smoke-filled room in Quanzhou, an ancient seaport on the narrow waterway between mainland China and Taiwan; each one was seeking a $19,000 cut just for witnessing a deal.

Unknown to the smugglers, the young woman was not, as she had told them, a Taiwanese buyer for wealthy collectors. Rather she was an ardent conservationist who had gone undercover to document the extent of illegal trade in endangered species between China and Taiwan and Hong Kong. For six weeks in 1990, under the sponsorship of the TRAFFIC division of the World Wildlife Fund, she took a risky journey through southeast China, following the movements of a complex underground network of hunters, smugglers, black marketeers, thugs and fishermen. While she never bought any animals, she found it necessary to hand out small bribes of $20, called red envelopes, just to meet the people with the wares, which included the nearly extinct Amur leopard as well as gibbons, golden monkeys and even eagles. TIME's Tad Stoner was permitted, on an exclusive basis, to accompany her during one week of her startling sojourn.

This week the WWF will release a report based on the investigation that paints a grisly picture of what is happening to China's stock of rare animals. "The coast is crawling with trade," says the 25-year-old investigator, whose name has been withheld to safeguard future projects. "Anything I wanted they could get and could get within a week. All I had to do was order." ; China, she adds, "is in grave danger of forever losing species that have their homes nowhere else in the world."

No animal is more prized than China's giant panda, a national symbol. Only about 1,000 remain in the wild, largely because of the disappearance of their bamboo grazing grounds and their limited ability to adapt to change. But natural dangers have been surpassed by human ones. Lured by the huge prices that pandas bring -- from $5,000 to $112,000 in a country where the average monthly wage is $29 -- poachers are closing in on this rare animal, tracking it down even in China's nature preserves. During the course of her travels, the WWF investigator saw two panda pelts and was offered 16 more.

That, however, was only a small taste of what was available through clandestine channels. At a village near Quanzhou, the WWF agent was treated to the sickening sight of 28 leopard skins, including six identified as the critically endangered Amur, believed to number only 40 in the world. The price: $380 apiece. Two taxidermy shops in Fuzhou offered more extravagant horror shows. "One had egrets, leopard cats, pangolins, slow lorises and eagles." The other shop contained "at least 100 animal specimens and must have had 500 birds -- kingfishers, hummingbirds, everything." The owner, she speculates, "may have connections in the local zoo."

The Chinese government cracked down on such trafficking in 1989, when it passed new wildlife-protection laws prohibiting hunting and trading of endangered animals, with stiff penalties for violators. Last year two panda traders were executed. But even the threat of capital punishment has failed to slow the poachers. Since the laws were enacted, more than 2,000 illegal killings have been reported, and enforcement of the measures is lax. "The government is interested in protection, but it has too many other things to take care of," explains one exasperated Chinese conservationist. Says the WWF investigator: "There is little effective control. Hunters told me they shoot anything they see."

The illicit trade was spurred by a political event in 1987: the lifting of martial law in Taiwan. The result was a thaw in relations between wealthy Taiwan and struggling China. While the two countries remain officially estranged, more than 1 million Taiwanese have visited China, while 50,000 Chinese have sneaked into Taiwan for jobs. Such exchanges create opportunities for black marketeers, who have taken advantage of the new "mainland fever" sweeping the acquisitive Taiwanese. Black-market deals, particularly for pelts, can be conducted only through a series of middlemen. Each person provides an introduction to the next link in the human chain, then extracts a fee for the service. Ultimately the Taiwanese meet the Chinese on the muddy, gray waters of the Taiwan Strait. Often the pelts, along with Chinese antiques and traditional medicines, are traded by fishermen for Taiwanese electronics and consumer goods. The practice is so universal that when members of the Taiwan Coast Guard were asked by the WWF agent to estimate how many fisherman were engaged in smuggling, they laughed and replied, "All of them."

Endangered species, a significant portion of the contraband smuggled into Taiwan, appeal to rich consumers there for a number of reasons. Environmentalism is a new and alien concept; Chinese society tends to emphasize the utility of animals. Exotic pets are status symbols, while pelts are hung in the homes of the wealthy. Eating elaborately prepared dishes featuring endangered animals carries mystical connotations of power. This is jinbu: if you eat a tiger's eyes, for example, your eyes are said to assume the acuity of a tiger's. Many folk medicines are made from the teeth or organs of exotic animals.

Though China called for tougher application of its laws against the trafficking in February, it is doubtful the nation has the resources or the political will to mount a sustained enforcement effort. The willingness of many police officers to accept small bribes makes a mockery of legislation.

The WWF hopes its expose will spur China and Taiwan, which has strict regulations that are rarely applied, to greater enforcement of their laws. The report recommends a crackdown on hunters and more funds for enforcement. But even if the governments commit themselves, it could be centuries before the animal populations recover from what has already been done. "It will take 400 to 500 years before any headway is really made," says Hu Jinchu, an expert on pandas at the Nanchong Normal College in Sichuan. "We've wrested too much from nature."

With reporting by Mia Turner/Beijing and Tad Stoner/Quanzhou