Endangered Species in TCM

[GeneChing]

Russian, Chinese smugglers arrested with ton of bear paws, animal parts—NGO
Agence France-Presse / 04:18 PM January 31, 2018


The Siberian tiger, seen here in a reserve in northeastern China, is an endangered species, hunted for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Image: AFP

A group of Russian and Chinese smugglers has been arrested near the border between the two countries in possession of a ton of bear paws as well as tiger, deer and frog parts, an animal protection group said Tuesday.

The smugglers were arrested at the weekend by Russian customs officers in the far east of the country with 870 of the bear paws “and the remains of at least four Siberian tigers” in their three vehicles, said the Russian tiger protection NGO.

The Russian and Chinese nationals were also caught with bear teeth, deer tails and *****es and other animal parts as well as arms and ammunition and an amount of amber, the Amur Tiger Center said.

According to the tiger protection group, the smugglers were headed for China when they were apprehended and were preparing to cross the frozen Lake Khanka on the border.

China is a big market for animals parts from endangered or protected species including tigers, bears, elephants, rhino and pangolins.

The parts are used in the traditional medicine market which flourishes despite the total lack of scientific evidence as to their efficacy and Chinese government campaigns to end the trade.

“The animal body parts are often transported close to Chinese New Year,” which this year falls on February 16, the NGO’s head Sergey Aramilev said.

The Siberian tiger, also known as the Amur tiger, is the largest of the big cats. There remain only around 350 of the animals in the wild, in China, Russia and North Korea. NVG

Wonder what the penalty is? Hope it's harsh.

Thread: Endangered Species in TCM
Thread: 2018 Year of the EARTH DOG

[GeneChing]

Jaguars killed for fangs to supply growing Chinese medicine trade
Demand from Chinese workers raises demand for skin and body parts of endangered species
Robin McKie, Observer science editor

Sun 4 Mar 2018 02.00 EST


Jaguar numbers have dwindled in recent years, especially in South America. Photograph: Jalen Evans/Getty Images

Conservationists who have uncovered a growing illegal trade in jaguar fangs in South America are linking it to Chinese construction projects that could be threatening wildlife globally.

Experts say major Chinese power plant, road and rail works in developing nations are key stimulants of illicit trade in the skins, bones and horns of endangered animals.

Local people find out that Chinese construction workers have an interest in buying animal bones, horns and body parts for their supposed medical properties and an illicit trade is established. “Essentially, these projects act like giant vacuum cleaners of wildlife that suck everything back to China,” a conservation researcher, Vincent Nijman, of Oxford Brookes University, said last week. “It is a real worry.”

The problem in South America is of particular concern. More than 100 jaguars – a species whose numbers are dwindling – may have been killed in less than a year to supply a trade in their body parts with China. As tiger parts – which are prized by practitioners of Chinese traditional medicine – are becoming scarcer, so a market is opening up for organs from other big cats, including the jaguar.

Two examples of jaguar deaths are given in the current issue of Nature. It reports that on Boxing Day last year, the body of a jaguar was found floating in a drainage canal in Belize in central America.

“Its body was mostly intact, but the head was missing its fangs,” says the report. “Then, on 10 January, a second cat – this time an ocelot that may have been mistaken for a young jaguar – turned up headless in the same channel.”

The extent of the trade was also highlighted by Thaís Morcatty, a wildlife researcher based at Oxford Brookes University who has worked in South America. “Last year, there were more than 50 seizures of packages that contained jaguar parts in Brazil. Most of them appear to have been destined for Asia and China in particular. It is also worth noting there are major Chinese communities in Brazil,” she added.

Jaguars once roamed across much of the southern US, central America and South America. Today their numbers have been drastically reduced because of deforestation and by farmers shooting animals that attack their livestock. The prospect of them being used to supplement Chinese traditional medicine now threatens to reduce their numbers even further.

However, it is the global threat posed by this sort of trade that worries conservationists. For years, Chinese companies have been setting up vast construction project deals with more than 60 countries to construct ports, power stations, rail lines, roads, tunnels and bridges in the developing world. Examples include a $5.8bn power planet in Nigeria, an 835-mile-long railway in Angola and a six-lane, 680-metre-long bridge in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

“These projects are manned by Chinese workers and they go back and forth with local people and also send things back to their families in China,” said Nijman. “Among the things they send back are illicit bones, horns and skin valued by traditional medicine. There is not much sign of them using restraint. At the end of the day, almost anything that can be killed and traded will be.”

srsly? And what are jaguar fangs used for? Enlarging small *****es?

[David Jamieson]

When the mind is disconnected from the heart and the senses are disconnected from the world, we get this.
I know that sounds shmaltzy, but it is the bottom line.
There is no moral or ethic that says "this is fine, this is ok".

Fueled by superstition or refusal to use less destructive alternatives is destroying the whole world.
If consequences manifested sooner, we would likely do something, but as most serious change and loss occurs over a generation
we are oblivious for the most part.

[Jimbo]

The types of people who buy products with these endangered species ingredients don't care about the destruction to those species. They only care about themselves and the questionable benefits they might get NOW. Or the imagined status it might give them. Even if they were somehow made aware of how dire the situation is, they just don't care.

Several years ago, there was a big negative reaction to the mutilation of sharks by fishermen who cut off their fins and throw them back into the sea to die, all to serve the (Chinese) market for shark fin soup. The reaction from China officials was basically, "You are all racist against China and Chinese culture. It's nobody else's business but ours." UH...NO. The health of the wildlife and food chain in the oceans is everybody's business. China (or any other country) does not own this entire planet, nor do they have the right to drive animal species to extinction so they can line their pockets.

Not TCM-related, but the same thing applies to the dolphin and whale-slaughtering "tradition" in Taiji, Japan; as well as the sick "sport" of rich Westerners big-game hunting elephants, rhinos, giraffes, and lions, etc., for fun and excitement.

[GeneChing]

Where Jaguars Are ‘Killed to Order’ for the Illegal Trade
Enterprising Chinese immigrants in Suriname have set up networks to hunt jaguars, process their bodies, and smuggle the products to China.
Jaguar poaching and trafficking is a growing problem in Suriname and across South America.
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE WINTER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
BY RACHAEL BALE

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 23, 2018

A brief story appeared early this year on a news website in Suriname under the headline, “Jaguar teeth found on departing travelers.” The article noted that three Chinese men were arrested in January in possession of the teeth—illegal in Suriname, where jaguars are a protected species. The men were given a “hefty fine” and “sent away.”

Despite numerous inquiries to several ministries and the public prosecutor's office, many of the cases's details still weren't available; however, a representative for the Ministry of Physical Planning, Land, and Forest Management, which oversees wildlife issues, said in an email that the men actually were not fined and were allowed to continue on their journey. It's not clear who was responsible for that decision.


In China, jaguar teeth are likely used as substitutes for tiger teeth, which are turned into necklaces worn as status symbols or in the belief that they protect the wearer from evil. These teeth were confiscated by law enforcement in Bolivia.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTIAN RODRIGUEZ

Though few details are known, it’s apparent that this case is emblematic of a much larger, well-organized network of international jaguar trafficking, with the cats being “killed to order,” turned into jewelry and a medicinal product called “glue,” and smuggled out of Suriname in carry-on luggage on commercial airlines.

The problem was first highlighted by the World Wildlife Fund’s Guianas office in 2010. Now a new investigation by the London-based nonprofit World Animal Protection has provided insights into who the traffickers are, how they work, and the damage they’re doing.

CHINA’S STAKE IN SURINAME

China has been investing heavily in Suriname, as it has elsewhere in South America. A wave of Chinese immigration that began about 20 years ago has brought in thousands of people who work as loggers, miners, and shop owners. The Chinese run operations from major road and building projects to huge logging and mining concessions in the interior jungle.

Access roads to the logging and mining operations have opened up previously inaccessible forested regions, and the back-and-forth travel of Chinese expatriates facilitates the movement of goods out of Suriname. It’s in this setting that the illegal trade in jaguar products has developed.


A photo from social media obtained by an investigator shows a dead jaguar reportedly killed by a miner in Suriname’s interior.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY WORLD ANIMAL PROTECTION

“It is certainly likely that the influx of Chinese citizens has expanded the domestic market for jaguar parts in Suriname,” says Pauline Verheij of the nonprofit International Fund for Animal Welfare. She investigated Suriname’s jaguar trade in early 2018, before joining IFAW, and has found evidence of Chinese people buying jaguar parts in Suriname as long ago as 2003. She adds that in addition to the recent wave of Chinese immigrants, Suriname has a sizeable community of Chinese-Surinamese born and raised in the country who also buy and use jaguar products. Some evidence exists that other groups do as well, though on a much smaller scale.

“Filipinos are rumored to consume the meat—then you have anyone coming to buy jaguar teeth and fangs [for jewelry]. Sometimes the skins will be displayed by locals,” says Nicholas Bruschi, who led the World Animal Protection investigation. But “it’s the Chinese who seem to be dealing in the high amounts of product.”

The main driver of the trade, according to the investigation, is jaguar paste. Alternatively known as jaguar glue, it’s a molasses-like substance made by boiling down the body of a jaguar for seven days. It’s rumored to help with various ailments, from excessive sleepiness to sleeplessness. “There’s absolutely no evidence that jaguar paste cures anything,” Bruschi says.

While the origin of its use isn’t known, Bruschi believes that jaguar paste is an adaptation of tiger paste, a traditional Vietnamese “medicine” responsible in part for the massive illegal trade of tigers in Southeast Asia. Although tiger paste is primarily a Vietnamese product, it appears that jaguar paste is made by and sold to Chinese.

In Chinese, the word for jaguar basically translates to “American tiger,” and across South America, jaguars are also often called “tigers.” It’s unclear whether Chinese consumers are actively interested in jaguar paste itself, or whether they don’t differentiate between it and tiger paste. It’s also possible that once jaguar paste reaches China, it may falsely be labeled as tiger, according to Bruschi.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

THE SUPPLY CHAIN

The process can start in one of two ways. Sometimes a hunter comes across a jaguar or a rancher finds a jaguar stalking his cattle. They could kill the cat and sell it to a middleman for good money. This kind of incidental hunting typically is driven either by fear or by loss of jaguar habitat to ranching, farming, mining, and logging. With less space to hunt for wild prey, the cats are more likely to be tempted by cattle, chicken, and dogs in areas occupied by people.

In addition to these opportunistic forms of jaguar hunting, there’s “kill-to-order,” as Bruschi calls it. That’s when someone in Paramaribo decides he needs a jaguar and puts the word out through his contacts in rural areas that he’s looking to buy. Sometimes the bounty is advertised on social media and by phone, the investigation found, and it can be worth more than a rural person may make in a month.

It can take multiple shots to kill a jaguar and sometimes hours of stalking the wounded animal before the hunter can fire the lethal bullet, the investigation found. If the jaguar has a cub, it may be left for dead or sold into the illegal pet trade.

In Suriname, killing, transporting, buying, selling, even possessing a protected species such as a jaguar is against the law, punishable by up to $134,000 or up to six years in jail, according to Nancy del Prado, an environmental lawyer based in Paramaribo. So getting the jaguar’s body to the capital, where it will be processed, involves a gantlet of transfers, from car to car and safe house to safe house. “It’s constantly kept on the move to frustrate law enforcement,” Bruschi says.


Mining in Suriname’s interior has reduced jaguar habitat, which has brought the cats into contact with humans more often. Miners may shoot a jaguar out of fear or to protect their dogs, or to fill a bounty offered by a jaguar trafficker.
PHOTOGRAPH BY EDWARD TROON, AP

Once the jaguar gets to Paramaribo, it’s usually kept in a Chinese-owned shop. These businesses are less likely to be investigated by law enforcement because the Chinese community wields so much influence, says Els van Lavieren, with the Conservation International Suriname office, where she’s been investigating the trade for the past two years. “The Chinese community here runs all the shops. All the supermarkets are run by Chinese. They’re important in the economy of Suriname.”

The jaguar will be cooked down into paste, which is put into small containers that smugglers pack into carry-on luggage, often alongside Tiger Balm, a strong-smelling ointment commonly used by athletes to soothe muscle pain. The Tiger Balm helps throw airport sniffer dogs off track, according to the World Animal Protection investigation.

“A lot of Chinese people traveling back to China from here are involved in the smuggling,” van Lavieren says. “They’re going back anyway, so they’re taking some [jaguar products] to get some extra cash.”

In China, Bruschi says, the jaguar paste is sold within friend and family networks, though he says he wants to do more work to better understand that side of the trade.

Jaguar teeth—“by far” the most valuable body part, according to Verheij—are also an important part of the trade. They're sold mostly to Chinese, both in Suriname and China, as necklaces. The illegal trade in jaguar canines has also been identified in Bolivia and elsewhere in South America.

The whole process, from beginning to end, is “very sophisticated,” says a Surinamese park ranger, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his ongoing investigation into the trade. “They know exactly what they’re doing.”

WHERE IS LAW ENFORCEMENT?

Vanessa Kadosoe, of the National Zoological Collection of Suriname, who’s doing research on Suriname’s jaguar numbers, worries about what will happen to the forest if jaguars disappear. As an apex predator, jaguars control the populations of herbivores, such as deer and agouti, a type of rodent. Without jaguars preying on the plant eaters, their numbers could explode, which in turn could wipe out plant species and possibly lead to their gobbling up people’s crops. “If you take out the top predators, you’ll have the whole system come tumbling down,” she says.


A remote camera captures a 10-month-old jaguar cub in Brazil’s Pantanal, one of the last bastions of the species. (Read National Geographic magazine's "The Shrinking Kingdom of the Jaguars.")
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE WINTER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

A reliable estimate of the number of jaguars in Suriname doesn’t yet exist, but evidence suggests that poaching is taking a toll. The park ranger says he gets a call from informants about the shooting of a jaguar roughly every two weeks, and photos of dead jaguars show up on social media with some regularity. And Bruschi says that, anecdotally, certain areas are having fewer jaguar sightings.

“My assessment, based on several sources, is that the number of jaguars killed for their parts in Suriname may amount to well over a hundred on an annual basis,” Verheij says. “It doesn't take a biologist to understand that these numbers are hugely unsustainable.”

“Enforcement is one of the biggest improvements we can make because at the moment there’s so little enforcement going on that people aren’t even afraid to show pictures on Facebook with their guns and jaguars they’ve shot,” van Lavieren says.

It’s unclear how many arrests have been made for charges relating to selling and smuggling jaguar parts. In an email to National Geographic, the representative from the Ministry of Physical Planning, Land, and Forest Management said that they do keep statistics on arrests and convictions that the records aren’t digitized and “it would take some time to extract specific information regarding jaguars.”

INSIDE THE BLACK MARKET SALE OF JAGUAR PARTS

Go inside the black market trade of jaguar parts with National Geographic photographer Steve Winter and big cat biologist Alexander Braczkowski.
In her review of media reports on jaguar-related arrests, Verheij found that most offenders have been let off with a fine—as was the case with the three Chinese men in January—rather than being prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows. She also says customs controls at the borders should be beefed up and that the government needs to better fund its nature conservation division so it will have the staff, resources, and equipment necessary to do patrols and carry out investigations.

Kadosoe agrees. She wants to see rangers posted on the roads again, doing vehicle checks as they used to in the 1980s. More such monitoring would make some people think twice before illegally transporting a jaguar.

At present, according to the ranger, he and his colleagues are handicapped. He says there’s not even enough fuel for them to go out on patrol, given that they’re each usually allocated only 30 liters—not even a full tank—for each of their three cars for the entire month.

“What can you do with 30 liters of fuel in the forest? You can drive to the airport and come back. You can’t go ****her to check out the hunters, the poachers, the logging areas,” he says. “I’m doing this on my own.”

The ministry acknowledges that resources are scarce, but it says patrols do take place. “Our wildlife rangers carry out regular patrols, but there is enormous ground to cover and a relatively limited budget to work with,” the written statement says. It also acknowledges that there’s no specific strategy for jaguar conservation at the moment, though it says some proposals are pending that would specifically address jaguar protections.

The good news is that because most of Suriname is untamed jungle, jaguars still have naturally protected areas—for now. But for a long time Suriname has wanted to build a road straight through the jungle to connect Paramaribo in the north to the border with Brazil in the south, which would open up remote swaths of jaguar habitat.

Already a Chinese company has paved a road part of the way there.

Wildlife Watch is an investigative reporting project between National Geographic Society and National Geographic Partners focusing on wildlife crime and exploitation. Read more Wildlife Watch stories here, and learn more about National Geographic Society’s nonprofit mission at nationalgeographic.org . Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife@natgeo.com.

This article features a beautiful gallery of jaguars and a vid.

[GeneChing]

China Approves Use of Rhino, Tiger Parts for Medical Treatment and Research
Change eases 25-year ban and draws criticism from activists concerned to protect endangered species


China’s new regulations allow rhino horns from animals raised in captivity, apart from zoos, to be used for medical research or healing. PHOTO: ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By Chun Han Wong
Oct. 30, 2018 9:01 a.m. ET

BEIJING—China has relaxed a 25-year ban on the sale and use of rhinoceros and tiger parts amid efforts to bolster the traditional Chinese medicine industry, angering activists who say it undercuts efforts to protect endangered animals.

A government directive published Monday said rhino horns and tiger bones could now be used for “medical research or in healing” by certified hospitals and doctors, as long as the parts were sourced from animals raised in captivity, apart from those in zoos. Other exceptions to the ban included scientific research and education, as well as cultural exchanges.

The decision dovetails with President Xi Jinping’s campaign to promote the multibillion-dollar traditional Chinese medicine sector, which evolved over millennia and includes the use of herbal medicine and acupuncture. The industry has gained size and clout over recent years as Mr. Xi has used it as a vehicle for expanding China’s global influence.

Conservationists said the decision could encourage poaching and facilitate black-market trade in rhino and tiger parts that many Chinese wrongly believe to have medicinal value. China is the world’s largest market for illegal rhino horn, according to Elephant Action League, a Los Angeles-based conversation nonprofit. Wildlife experts estimate that there are about 30,000 rhinos and 3,900 tigers left in the wild globally.

“It sets up what is essentially a laundering scheme for illegal tiger bone and rhino horn to enter the marketplace and further perpetuate the demand for these animal parts,” Iris Ho, a wildlife specialist at Washington, D.C, nonprofit Humane Society International, said in a statement.


Some Chinese practitioners use tiger-bone products to relieve joint pains and boost male virility. Many scientific studies have found they have no medicinal properties. PHOTO: PETER PARKS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Beijing banned the trade and medical use of rhino horn and tiger bone in 1993, when it also excised references to them from official catalogues of Chinese medical ingredients.

Even so, some practitioners still use rhino horn to treat ailments including fever, rheumatism and gout, while applying tiger-bone products to relieve joint pains and boost male virility. Many scientific studies have found no medicinal properties in either.

The State Council didn’t give reasons for easing the ban. Its publicity office referred queries to the Chinese-medicine regulator, which didn’t immediately respond.

Lu Kang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said the new directive updates the 1993 regulations that had become “incompatible” with other existing laws. China remains committed to protecting endangered animals and has set “strict supervisory mechanisms” to improve enforcement, Mr. Lu told reporters during a regular briefing on Tuesday.

The traditional Chinese medicine industry earns more than $120 billion annually and employs more than 660,000 medical practitioners, according to government data.

Mr. Xi has touted Chinese medicine as a scientific and cultural export, particularly to developing countries in Asia and Africa. In 2017, he gave the World Health Organization a statue depicting acupuncture points on the human body, as part of efforts to promote global acceptance of Chinese medical techniques.

Just last week, Mr. Xi visited a Chinese-medicine technological park in southern Guangdong province, where he called the field a “treasure of the Chinese civilization” and urged more efforts to take the industry global.

Some leading Chinese-medicine practitioners, including members of the national legislature, have lobbied for looser restrictions on the medicinal use of parts from endangered species.

“Under conditions that don’t affect the reproduction and survival of these animals, we should reasonably utilize them and conduct scientific research,” Zhang Boli, a legislator and president of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, said in 2015 remarks published by state media.

He said parts could be sustainably harvested for medicinal use by breeding rhinos and using bones from tigers that die from natural causes. China had about 4,000 tigers bred in captivity, according to a 2016 state-media report.

Last year, the government’s Chinese-medicine regulator said it had commissioned an industry group to study ways to “protect and utilize endangered animals for medicinal use,” including rhinos. Its aim was to “satisfy the public’s basic pharmaceutical needs, premised on sustainable development of endangered medicinal resources,” the regulator said.

It wasn’t clear if those studies led to the State Council’s directive, which was issued on Oct. 6 but released publicly only three weeks later. State media reports on the directive highlighted government assurances that the trade in rhino and tiger parts would be strictly managed to ensure the protection of such animals.

Conservationists say China’s decision is bewildering given its recent record in supporting wildlife protection, which had contributed to declining rhino-horn prices in recent years. Two years ago, the Chinese government said it would ban all domestic ivory trade by the end of 2017, a move widely applauded as a significant step in reducing elephant poaching.

—Fanfan Wang contributed to this article.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com

One step forward, two steps backward...

[GeneChing]

After the previous article, I'm encouraged to hear that there was outcry and that it had an effect.

Asia & Pacific
China makes a U-turn on legalizing tiger and rhino trade following international outcry


Customs officers stand next to an intercepted rhino horn shipment during a news conference in Hong Kong on Nov. 15, 2011. (Bobby Yip/Reuters)

By Gerry Shih November 13

HONG KONG — China has halted a directive that partially legalized the domestic trade in farmed rhinoceros and tiger parts, two weeks after the move drew a torrent of criticism from conservation groups.

A senior official in China’s cabinet said in a state media interview published Monday that implementation of an October directive reviving the market for the endangered animal parts has been “postponed after study.”

The official, Ding Xuedong, did not specify how long the delay would last. But the interview, which was published in English and Chinese by the official Xinhua News Agency, was cheered by international conservation advocates who saw it as an acknowledgement by Chinese leaders that they made a misstep.

“The Chinese government has long been dedicated to the cause of wildlife protection and has made achievements recognized by the world,” Xinhua quoted Ding, a top official in China’s State Council, as saying.

China, Ding added, “has not changed its stance on wildlife protection and will not ease the crackdown on illegal trafficking and trade of rhinos, tigers and their byproducts.”

The State Council unveiled a directive in late October ending a 25-year ban on trade for rhino and tiger parts — as long as they were sourced from farmed animals and used for traditional Chinese medicine.

The announcement sparked an outcry from wildlife advocates, as well as the United Nations, which warned that a resumption of China’s market for tiger and rhino parts — no matter how narrowly proscribed — would fuel illegal poaching and devastate wild populations.

Conservation groups applauded China’s latest reversal, saying it was more consistent with the position that Beijing has carved out in recent years as a leader on wildlife protection, environment and climate change. China was praised last year for banning the elephant ivory trade altogether.

“It’s a positive sign that China has heard and responded to the overwhelming concerns from the international community,” said Leigh Henry, director of wildlife policy at the World Wildlife Fund. “It’s critical now that the ban remains permanent and is expanded to cover trade in all tiger parts and products, and that a commitment is made to phase out China’s tiger farms altogether.”

Wildlife advocates speculated in October that China’s move to revive the animal parts market was driven by domestic politics. Some viewed it as a way to promote traditional Chinese medicine, while others saw the measure as the handiwork of China’s tiger farms, which have raised an estimated 6,000 tigers in captivity and seek a market for their goods.

Ding, the senior Chinese official, said this week the government would maintain its policy of “three strict bans,” including a prohibition on the use of tiger and rhino parts for medicine, and appeared to extend an olive branch overseas.

“I would like to reiterate that the Chinese government is willing to work with the international community to jointly strive for protecting wildlife and building our harmonious and beautiful planet,” he said.

[GeneChing]

The insidious black market taking Hong Kong turtles to brink of extinction
By Caroline Malone and Ivan Watson, CNN
Updated 1:07 AM ET, Fri December 28, 2018
Conservationists fight to save endangered turtles
Golden coin turtles are endangered and only found in the wild in parts of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong (CNN) There's only one place left on Earth where a critically endangered species of freshwater turtle is known to survive in the wild: Hong Kong.
Golden coin turtles are native to the metropolis' natural streams and surrounding vegetation but are so rare it's almost impossible to see one in the wild. Turtle traps, on the other hand, can readily be found.
Poachers capture the reptiles to sell as pets, food or use in traditional Chinese medicine.
The golden coin turtle has a special yellow hue on its head, and three black stripes on its shell. It's a type of box turtle, meaning it can lock its limbs and head inside its shell to guard against predators.
But that doesn't protect it from human hunters.

Trapped

Researchers supported by the Hong Kong government's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department regularly search the city's extensive country parks to clear away traps.
"From observation, it seems that illegal traps have been in decline," said Yik Hei Sung, an ecologist and assistant research professor with the School of Biological Sciences at Hong Kong University.
"However, recent surveys show that at a certain time of year turtle trapping activity is really high. There's a good chance trapping is very active in some places."
All wild turtles are protected by law.
Researchers alert the government when they find a trap. Hunting wild animals is punishable by one year in prison and a fine of up to $13,000 (100,000 HKD).


A sign warning against illegal hunting seen in a Hong Kong country park.

The golden coin turtle is listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, a global register. The Hong Kong government says anyone found with endangered species faces a maximum fine of $1.3 million ($10 million HKD) and 10 years in jail.
However, in the last three years only one person has been fined the relatively small sum of $1,500, after being caught with equipment to hunt wild creatures -- including turtles. No one has been prosecuted over golden coin turtles in recent years.
Because of their value as pets or for other purposes, rare turtles like the golden coin are bred on farms in China. It's also possible to own a wild turtle with a special license in Hong Kong.
However, experts say this provides a loophole via which wild golden coin turtles are sold as farmed versions in markets. Or shopkeepers use a license they've had for decades, even though they've traded many turtles in that time.
Prices vary, but turtle breeders can sell golden coin turtles for upwards of $10,000 online.


Despite being protected by law, loopholes allow golden coin turtles to be sold at markets.

Breeding program

The survival of most turtle species is under threat in China, where many have been caught to fill the demands of medicinal, pet and food markets.
The semi-aquatic golden coin turtle used to be found across southern China, Vietnam and Laos. After conservationists realized it was disappearing from the wild, the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden in Hong Kong started a breeding program.
"We've basically been building for about 20 years an assurance colony of the three-banded box turtle," Kadoorie senior conservation officer Paul Crow said. "This species is on the brink of wild extinction, it's nearly gone. The only place on the planet that we have any recent evidence of them breeding in the wild is here in Hong Kong."
While Hong Kong is best known as a skyscraper-packed metropolis, about 40% of the city's territory is protected country park land. The parks' lush forests and streams are ideal for golden coin turtles -- but are also easily accessible by poachers.


The golden coin turtle used to be found across China and southeast Asia.

While breeding programs may save the golden coin turtle from extinction for now, researchers warn that unless the law is better enforced, it could die out in its last known native habitat in a matter of years.
"Over the last 10 to 20 years people have been seeing traps all over Hong Kong. There are basically very few streams that are easily accessible that have not been trapped," said Anthony Lau, an ecologist and lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University.
"For the turtles it is not getting better."

Call anything 'gold coin' and Chinese are going to want it. Such a senseless waste.

[GeneChing]

Of course it was Chinese.

7 Chinese caught with $1m rhino horn pieces
27 DEC, 2018 - 00:12



Leonard Ncube Victoria Falls Reporter
SEVEN Chinese were arrested in Victoria Falls in possession of more than 20kg of rhino horn pieces valued about $1 million.

Zeng Dengui (35), Peicon Jang (35), Liu Cheng (23), Yu Xian (25), Yong Zhu (25), Chen Zhiangfu (30) and Qui Jinchang (29) were arrested following a search at their rented house in Aerodrome suburb on Sunday morning.

The rhino pieces were allegedly hidden in plastic bags and boxes.

Police received a tip-off that the seven were in possession of rhino horns.

The police applied for a search warrant before raiding the house on Sunday morning.

The seven appeared before Victoria Falls magistrate Ms Rangarirai Gakanje yesterday.

They were not formally charged for contravening Section 45(1) (b) of the Parks and Wildlife Act Chapter 20:14 as read with Section 128(b) of the same Act.

The sections criminalise keeping, possessing, selling or disposing of any live specially protected animal, meat or trophy of any such animal.

The magistrate remanded the accused in custody to Thursday next week.

Prosecuting, Mr Bheki Tshabalala said the accused were found in possession of the rhino pieces at No. 858 Aerodrome on Sunday morning.

“On 22 December information was received that there were some Chinese nationals at house number 858 Aerodrome, who were suspected to be keeping rhino horns. Police applied for a search warrant and proceeded to the house on Sunday morning whereupon searching they recovered a plastic bag containing several pieces of rhino horn in one of the bedrooms used by Liu,” said Mr Tshabalala.

He said several other pieces were found in a cardboard box and some stashed inside a mattress that had been cut for concealment.

A digital scale was also recovered, the court heard.

Mr Tshabalala said the pieces weighed 20,98kg and a veterinary surgeon confirmed that they were genuine rhino horns.

The total value of the pieces is $938 700. Mr Givemore Mvhiringi of Mvhiringi and Associates is representing the accused.

[GeneChing]

MARCH 27, 2019 / 10:09 PM / UPDATED 9 HOURS AGO
As China pushes traditional medicine globally, illegal wildlife trade flourishes
Farah Master
6 MIN READ

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese traditional medicine is rapidly expanding worldwide as a key pillar of the country’s Belt and Road initiative, but conservation groups say demand for treatments using animal products is driving a surge in illegal trafficking of wildlife.


Workers weigh herbs behind a bust portraying Chinese herbalist Li Shizhen of the Ming dynasty, at a traditional Chinese medicine store in Beijing, China June 7, 2015. Picture taken June 7, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer

Since the start of the year, authorities in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong have seized record volumes of threatened species, including 8.3 tonnes of pangolin scales from nearly 14,000 pangolins and its largest ever haul of rhino horns, worth more than $1 million.

The former British colony is one of the world’s primary wildlife trafficking transit points, supplying an array of products including shark fins, tiger parts and rhino horn across Asia and into mainland China.

“One of the most alarming characteristics of wildlife trafficking is the growing use of threatened species in traditional medicines,” conservation group ADM Capital Foundation said in a recent report.

It identified the traditional Chinese medicine industry as accounting for more than three-quarters of the trade in endangered wildlife products in Hong Kong over the past 5 years.

China’s State Council has outlined a multi-decade plan to promote traditional medicine, including setting up hospitals, museums, medicinal zoos and botanical gardens in countries involved in its Belt and Road infrastructure rollout.

The industry is booming.

Worth some $60 billion a year, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) Bulletin, and growing at around 11 percent annually, according to IBIS World, practices such as acupuncture and herbal supplementation are finding acceptance globally.

The WHO says it will formally recognize traditional medicine in its compendium in May, meaning more mainstream recognition of practices dating back more than 2,500 years.

While many practitioners have shunned the use of endangered species, environmental groups say traditional remedies including rare animals are still popular in Vietnam and China, where they are used for a range of ills from cancer to skin blemishes and hangovers.

Species including pangolin, rhino, saiga, sea horses, moon bears and tigers are some of the animals critically endangered by the trade, according to wildlife organizations.

Zhou Jinfeng, Secretary-General of China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, said the WHO should take sustainability and science as preconditions for incorporating traditional Chinese medicine into its compendium.

“All medicinal treatment should be on the principle of ‘do no harm’ to those using, or making it and to the species it depends on; meaning in most cases no vertebrate should be used within TCM,” Zhou said, referring to traditional Chinese medicine.

Inclusion in the compendium did not mean the WHO endorsed the scientific validity of traditional medicine, or that it recommended or condoned the use of animal parts, a WHO spokesman Tarik Jašarević said.

“WHO recommends the enforcement of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which protects rhinos, tigers, and other species,” he said.

TCM PLAYERS
While Hong Kong does not typically manufacture traditional Chinese medicine products, it imports them from the mainland and a wide array, including pangolin scales, saiga horn and shark fin, are readily available in the city’s Western district.

Hong Kong lawmaker Elizabeth Quat said preventing the use of endangered animals in traditional Chinese medicine must happen in the mainland.

“The Chinese government should do something. Manufacturing is mostly in China. The government needs to stop the production of it,” she said.

In online Chinese forums, customers can buy everything from African rhino horn to live young pangolins, also known as scaly anteaters, and the powdered horn of saiga, an endangered type of antelope found in Europe and Asia.

While the use of rhino horn is officially banned in China, pangolin and saiga products are legally used in Chinese medicine with the big traditional medicine companies all producing them.

Companies including Kangmei Pharmaceutical and Tong Ren Tang have been given permits by local government bodies to produce medicines with pangolin scales and saiga horns, according to corporate filings.

Gui Zhen Tang, which owns the biggest moon bear breeding center in southern China, has permits for extracting bear bile, according to its website.

China Traditional Medicine Holdings last year acquired Beijing Huamiao, a company it says holds permits for the “processed products of some of the endangered and protected wild animals”. It did not elaborate.

None of the companies responded to multiple requests for comment.

China’s State Forestry and Grassland Administration and the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine did not respond to requests to comment.

Hong Kong’s Health department said the city’s Chinese Medicines Board “has always been concerned about the balance between the protection of endangered species and the use of traditional Chinese medicine,” and it would continue to observe international regulatory trends and monitor the issue with regard to endangered species.

Farming of animals used in traditional medicine has been advocated by China’s Forestry administration and some breeders as a sustainable way to use endangered animals in traditional Chinese medicine.

However, activists say the use of farmed supplies of animals such as tigers and rhinos risks enabling the laundering of wild animal parts.

Many treatments have already substituted herbal products for animal parts, and practitioners say herbal alternatives are just as, if not more effective.

Lixing Lao, director at the School of Chinese Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said there was no need to use endangered species.

“Chinese medicine is part of the world,” Lao said. “We take care of the human health, the animals. If we use endangered species, it damages our reputation.”

Reporting by Farah Master; additional reporting by Forina Fu, Vincent Chow and Holly Chik; Editing by Lincoln Feast

Damages TCM's reputation and damages the planet.

[GeneChing]

I'm launching this 'TCM ED treatments' thread today although there's some news on this on other threads, such as our Endangered Species in TCM. I'll copy this there too.

Nothing like wiping a species off the face of the planet to get your dick hard.l

Used as a natural Viagra in Chinese medicine, seahorse numbers are declining
By Sarah Lazarus, CNN
Updated 8:37 PM ET, Thu June 6, 2019



Hong Kong (CNN)In a row of shops in Sheung Wan, on the western side of Hong Kong Island, the seahorses are stored in plastic boxes and glass jars, their elongated, S-shaped bodies stacked like spoons.

In Hong Kong, this district is the center of the trade in traditional Chinese medicine -- an ancient system that uses dried plants and animal parts to treat ailments. Its narrow streets are crammed with delivery trucks and men pushing trolleys loaded with crates of dried fungi, herbs, berries -- and seahorses.
In Chinese medicine, seahorses are believed to have Viagra-like powers. Hong Kong is the world's largest trading hub for the dried animal. Sarah Foster, program manager of Project Seahorse at the University of British Columbia in Canada, said that analysis of global trade data shows that Hong Kong was responsible for around two thirds of all seahorse imports from 2004 to 2017. The World Wildlife Fund has reported that their popularity as a medicine is also driving sales in China, Taiwan and Indonesia.
While nobody knows how many seahorse are left in the world, experts say they are under threat.
With their miniature equine snouts and beady eyes, seahorses look very different than most other fish. And unusually, it's the males that get pregnant.
But perhaps more importantly to conservation efforts, these are hard animals to study. Spread across vast oceans, some seahorses are less than an inch long and some can change color to camouflage themselves -- making them challenging to spot.


Sheung Wan is the epicenter of the trade in Chinese medicine and dried seafood in Hong Kong.

Foster said that about 37 million seahorses are caught in the wild every year. And despite regulations designed to protect them, smuggling is rampant.
According to Project Seahorse, research carried out around the world shows that populations of at least 11 species have dropped by between 30% and 50% over the past 15 years.
Why are seahorses used in Chinese medicine?
Seahorses were first mentioned in Chinese medical literature in 700AD but their use probably goes back much further, said Lixing Lao, director of the School of Chinese Medicine at the University of Hong Kong.


A herbal medicine shop in Sheung Wan. The cat is not for sale.

"According to Chinese medicine theory, seahorse is nourishing ... and gives the body more energy," he said. Mixed with herbs and boiled as a tea, dried seahorses are most commonly used to treat asthma and male sexual dysfunction, including impotence and premature ejaculation, he said.
Lao said there isn't there any scientific evidence that seahorses could relieve asthma or boost sexual performance, adding that there had not been any clinical trials carried out on humans in this area.
As a former British colony, Hong Kong sees a mix of both Western medicine and Chinese medicine -- there were 7,425 registered Chinese medicine practitioners in the territory in 2017, according to the Department of Health.
Seahorses retail in Sheung Wan for up to 40 Hong Kong dollars ($5) each.


Higher prices are charged for seahorses which are large, pale and smooth-skinned.

A shop assistant in Sheung Wan, who declined to give his name, said that from what he has seen, seahorses are mostly bought by men over the age of 50.
Smuggled in suitcases
In theory, seahorses are protected animals.
In 2002, all species were listed under Appendix II of CITES, an international treaty designed to ensure that the international trade in wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. With this listing, seahorses can be exported only if they have been sourced sustainably and legally, and there is paperwork to prove it.
Some countries, including Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, went further and imposed blanket bans on seahorse exports.
But these efforts have not saved seahorses, said Foster. Instead, the bans have created a black market.
Earlier this year, Foster participated in a research project in Hong Kong. Investigators questioned 220 traders about the origin of their seahorse stocks during 2016 and 2017 and found that an estimated 95% were imported from countries with export bans. The traders revealed that Thailand is the number one supplier of Hong Kong's Chinese medicine shops -- despite that country officially suspending exports in January 2016.
Small and non-perishable, dried seahorses are easily smuggled across borders, sometimes in mixed consignments with other dried seafood. Several of the traders in Foster's project admitted to carrying them in to Hong Kong in suitcases. With the trade now operating in the shadows, "it's a lot harder for us to monitor, track and manage it," said Foster.



Seahorses for sale in Hong Kong's Sheung Wan district.

The Chinese medicine shops in Sheung Wan are not breaking the law in selling seahorses. A spokesperson for the Hong Kong government's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) said that CITES measures for seahorses are designed to control import and export, but Hong Kong law does not ban trade within the territory.
The AFCD has been trying to stop the illegal imports. In 2018, Hong Kong authorities seized 45 shipments of incoming dried seahorses weighing a total of 470 kilograms -- approximately 175,000 seahorses. The heaviest penalty handed to a smuggler was a four-month prison sentence, said the spokesperson.
Caught in the net
The traditional Chinese medicine market might be fueling demand for seahorses, but if the trade was stopped it would not save them, said Foster. That's because the underlying problem isn't Chinese medicine -- "it's the fishing industry," she said.


By dragging a large net between them, these Thai pair trawlers catch more fish than two boats operating independently.

Foster explained that as relatively rare animals, seahorses are not usually targeted by fishing boats. However, when indiscriminate fishing gear is used, they get scooped up in the nets along with everything else.
Trawl nets -- large nets that are dragged along the seabed, catching everything in their path -- are the worst offenders. According to Project Seahorse, trawlers drag an area of seabed twice the size of the continental United States, every year.
Trawl fishing is widespread in Africa, Latin America, east Asia and southeast Asia, said Foster, and southeast Asia is a hotspot for seahorses.


Fishermen sort through the haul on a Mexican trawler.

As a valuable item, seahorses are usually retrieved from fishing nets and sold.
Even if the trade disappeared, seahorses would still be caught in the nets, said Foster -- which would almost certainly kill them. "Either way, they would be dying," she added.
Foster said the only way to save seahorses is to better manage fisheries -- reducing the size of fishing fleets, closing large areas of ocean to trawlers and making greater efforts to keep trawlers out of existing exclusion zones.
CNN contacted Thailand's Department of Fisheries for their view on seahorse exports and fisheries regulation but had not received a reply at the time of publication.
Foster would also like to see trade bans properly enforced with more rigorous checking of dried seafood shipments.
"Without greater political will, it won't be possible to stamp out the problem," she said, adding that she fears that seahorses will be wiped out in some parts of the world.

[GeneChing]

Hunting the Elusive Rhino-Horn Cartel of Thailand
From an outpost in northeastern Thailand, a couple of shadowy men have for years been running the world's most elaborate poaching ring—earning an enormous fortune by destroying some of the planet's most exotic creatures. Now can an enterprising vigilante finally bring down an untouchable smuggling syndicate?
BY JOSHUA HAMMER
June 17, 2019


ILLUSTRATIONS BY KELSEY NIZIOLEK

The thunder crack of rifle shot hung for a faint second in the air. Then, with a tremendous tumble, the white rhino hit the dirt. It had taken five bullets to bring the animal down, the final one fired from near-point-blank range. Now, as Chumlong Lemtongthai watched the creature give up its last, pained breaths, he saw only one thing: money.

“Let's go,” he said, instructing his associates to clamber over the corpse, plant themselves astride the head, and remove the animal's twin horns with a few thrusts of a bone saw. Lemtongthai, who'd grown up in Thailand but had made his way to South Africa to strike it rich on hunts like this one, moved deliberately, keenly aware that the work that mattered most to him was just beginning. He knew that a small fortune was his to be won. But first he had to spirit the horns out of Africa and into the hands of his associates in Laos. Once there, they'd be fed down a supply chain that he helped control.

Hitting the black market in China or Vietnam, the horns would be shaved into a fine powder and packaged into tiny vials, and then sold to those who cling to ancient beliefs about their power to heal all manner of maladies—like rheumatism, perhaps, or maybe cancer. The price for such a specious remedy is steep. The rhino dust—sometimes stirred carefully into tea, other times ingested directly—can fetch $65,000 per kilogram. For Lemtongthai, that meant nearly $200,000 for a single horn.

Illicit though his scheme was, there was nothing particularly clandestine about Lemtongthai's behavior out here in the African bush. He motioned for a young lady—a Thai stripper named “Joy”—to approach the dead rhino. Joy had dressed for the hunt in tight jeans and a purple track jacket. She was given the rifle, and she moved in beside the animal, kneeling with the gun in hand. She flashed a wide smile for a waiting camera. It was critical that she appear to be the one who'd bagged the rhino. A photo of Joy and her prize would help with that.

Lemtongthai had been trafficking protected species for a dozen years—but lately had gathered an increasing degree of influence in a vast world of poachers, smugglers, and other merchants of animal death. He'd had a gritty start in life, selling fruit in a street market in Bangkok. But his fortunes turned around when he fell in with a pair of men who dealt in the bones of exotic cats, which can also be ground and are sold in vast quantities. Under their tutelage, Lemtongthai learned the tricks of the tiger-bone trade: procuring the carcasses, boiling them to separate flesh from bone, then wrapping the skeletons in plastic bags and shipping them to a major buyer in Laos for $450 a kilogram.
From there the bones would move east, across the Laotian border into Vietnam, or north, into China. Soon he set himself up in South Africa and used the same techniques to begin moving large quantities of lion bone back to Asia. He was rarely troubled by the government export quotas on lion bone—ranchers and local officials hardly enforced them—and Lemtongthai could earn $1,000 for a bag of bones. He found buyers for even the teeth and claws, which couriers smuggled on flights to Bangkok (thanks, allegedly, to the help of corrupt airline employees).

Lemtongthai drove a Hummer, smoked high-quality weed, gambled in the casinos at Sun City near Johannesburg, and became a regular customer at the Flamingo Gentlemen's Club in Pretoria—a strip club filled with dancers imported from northern Thailand.

But he wanted more. Demand for rhino horn was soaring in Asia, and in 2009 Lemtongthai leapt at the opportunity to expand his business. The work would be risky: South Africa imposed long jail terms for anyone caught poaching or trading the animals. But Lemtongthai knew about a game-changing loophole he could exploit. At the time, under South African law, sportsmen were permitted to hunt one rhino per year and take the head as a personal trophy.

And so it was that Lemtongthai cooked up a simple scheme: He'd hire ringers to pose as trophy hunters, obtain legal export certificates from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and ship the horns to Laos via Thailand. Rather than adorn somebody's wall, they'd be ground down to serve more lucrative purposes.

At first, Lemtongthai flew cronies from home, four or five at a time, to Johannesburg. He made deals with crooked ranch owners, and they in turn hired professionals to do the actual hunting and paid off rangers. Lemtongthai's even believed to have paid off a wildlife quarantine officer at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport to help ensure that his horns got through without a hitch.

Before long, Lemtongthai hit upon an even more efficient plan: He'd use sex workers and other South Africa-based Thai women instead. One day he showed up at the Flamingo and offered the girls about $500 apiece to join the charade. That's how several of the Flamingo strippers, including Joy, were transformed into the world's unlikeliest big-game hunters. Soon they were regularly shuttling in Lemtongthai's black Hummer from the strip club to a ranch a couple of hours away.

The grim business was booming, until the scheme hit a snag. In February of 2011, customs officials at Suvarnabhumi Airport stopped a package of rhino horns that had become separated from its CITES certificate. When the officials tracked down the document, they took a close look and noticed that the globe-trotting trophy hunter who'd supposedly nabbed this rhino was actually a 20-year-old woman originally from northeast Thailand. That seemed odd.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

A shipment from the Hydra syndicate, packed on ice and seized in 2008 on it's way to Laos.
Courtesy of Freeland Foundation

In all of Bangkok, nobody was more interested in this little customs anomaly than Steve Galster. A shrewd and determined American conservationist, he'd cultivated a cozy relationship with customs officials because he craved this sort of intel. When he was tipped off about the strange package, he knew exactly what was going on.

Galster had moved to Thailand a decade earlier, setting up his own cloak-and-dagger operation to map—and dismantle—the covert market for illegal animal parts. He had zeroed in on the networks that powered the illicit trade, devoting particular attention to an elaborate organization that he had dubbed Hydra, after the multiple-headed sea serpent of Greek mythology. The scheme that Lemtongthai was wrapped up in, Galster figured, looked like a Hydra operation.

The org chart of the Hydra cartel is a map of secrets: a field guide of “who's who in the zoo.”

Run by a handful of powerful gangsters based in Thailand and Laos, Hydra utilized an army of suppliers who would deliver rhino horns, elephant tusks, lion bones, tiger bones, bear bile, the spines of pangolins (anteaters found in dwindling numbers in Southeast Asia and Africa), and other parts harvested from protected wildlife. Hydra also maintained a network of corrupt cops, customs officials, and court officials to facilitate shipments and shield itself from prosecution. Lemtongthai, Galster grasped, appeared to be a major figure in the syndicate.

Indeed, Lemtongthai was feeding brisk demand at the time, according to Galster. On April 23, 2011, Lemtongthai's buyer in Laos placed an order for 50 sets of rhino horns and 300 lion skeletons, which would sell for a total of $15 million. Lemtongthai would clear $1.5 million on the deal.

While Galster was focused on Lemtongthai, officials in South Africa were gathering evidence on the staged hunts, too. In November 2011, as Lemtongthai stepped off a flight from Bangkok, cops stopped the trafficker at the airport. “We found [incriminating] documents and computer files, along with photos of dead rhinos he was posing with,” a South African investigator, Charles van Niekerk, told me. Faced with evidence compiled by both van Niekerk and Galster, Lemtongthai pleaded guilty to running the scam and was sent to prison for six years. For Galster, this victory was just the start. Determined to work up the shadowy Hydra chain, he paid close attention to the scurrying chaos and reorganization set off within the syndicate by Lemtongthai's capture. Galster wasn't going to rest, he vowed, until he had killed Hydra completely.

The nerve center of Steve Galster's operation is tucked inconspicuously into a back alley in central Bangkok, in a low-slung villa. The building's tranquil courtyard features a turtle-filled pond and a garden shaded by lush palms and hardwoods. Inside, where his Freeland Foundation does business, the mood is less serene.

In one windowless office, Galster's obsession is splayed across an entire wall—a tangled collage of data that represents the organizational structure of Hydra. Looking something like John Nash's wall of feverish scribblings in A Beautiful Mind, the diagram has taken Galster years to assemble and has required the service of high-powered analytic software as well as old-fashioned covert sleuthing. It's a blizzard of headshots, birth dates, maps, government ID numbers, biographical text blocks, and hundreds of crisscrossing lines that delineate pecking orders, family relationships, and criminal connections. It's a map of secrets: a field guide, Galster says, of “who's who in the zoo.”

The giant dossier is deadly serious for Galster. “They are mass, serial murderers,” he tells me. By way of example, he points to the rise in rhinos slaughtered in South Africa in the past two decades—from 13 in 2007 to 83 in 2008 to 1,028 in 2017, an average of nearly three a day—a spike that he attributes in large part to Hydra. “These guys are laying waste to the world's most iconic and precious species for a ton of money,” he says.

While the pace of the slaughter has quickened, the demand in Asia for illicit animal parts is nothing new. Ancient Chinese medical texts are replete with references to the medicinal properties of rhino horn, tiger bone, anteater scales, and bear gallbladders. Some of the powers are purely imaginary: The keratin that composes a rhino's horn has no proven medical value. Other products have uses a bit more grounded in science. Bear bile is rich in ursodeoxycholic acid, which is useful for treating liver and gallbladder conditions.

Scientific or not, the trade in animal parts has grown more complex. The market for tusks, bones, and pangolin scales—which are all hard, durable products that can be stashed away for years—now includes savvy commodities brokers who hold them in hopes of making big profits when prices spike.

For many wealthy elite in China and Vietnam, the reputed health benefits are almost beside the point. The products have become status symbols, hauled out at parties and business meetings—markers of taste and sophistication. And a fast-rising middle class in both countries is increasingly fueling the trade.

The effects have been devastating. Aside from the well-documented mass slaughter of Africa's rhinos and elephants, Asian tigers have declined from 100,000 over a century ago to fewer than 4,000 today, while the rhino population in Asia has plummeted to the brink of extinction during the same period. And the cruelty is near unimaginable: Bear bile “farmers,” who operate throughout Southeast Asia, often insert catheters into a captive live animal, a frequently agonizing procedure, to extract the precious fluid from its gallbladder. Sometimes traffickers save themselves the trouble and just kill the bear outright, cut out the organ for onetime use, and ship it on ice.

The Thai government has long known about the abuses, but for many years it turned a blind eye to them. “There have been no rewards, no bonuses, no incentives for fighting wildlife crime in Thailand,” Galster says. “Police would rather work in counternarcotics or counterterrorism. We're trying to change that.”

The Freeland Foundation routinely shares information and resources with the police. To a degree that's rare among public and private organizations, they even work together on tough cases.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Galster is 57 and speaks in the flat tones of a native midwesterner. He wears a no-nonsense expression and tends to move along in big, loping strides, as if he always has somewhere important to get to. On a recent afternoon, he introduces me to two ex-narcotics agents on his staff: There's “General Eddy,” who became famous in law-enforcement circles for arresting the fugitive Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in 2008. Next I shake hands with “Poolsub,” who helped gather the evidence that put Chumlong Lemtongthai behind bars. In addition to the two dozen people working here in Bangkok, Galster also employs former military and law enforcement scattered around Southeast Asia—including “Nile,” a secretive character fluent in Vietnamese, whom I would later encounter at a beachside safe house and who has spent thousands of hours gathering surveillance photos and video footage of key Hydra players.

Galster's first glimpse at the highest rungs of Hydra leadership came over a decade ago. A wealthy and secretive Thai woman, whom Galster has never named, led him to a pair of poachers whom she persuaded to divulge their secrets. The men, Galster says, pointed to the figure who stood atop the organization: Vixay Keosavang, a former Laotian military officer. Soon after, Galster learned the identity of Keosavang's closest friend and alleged partner in crime: Bach Van Limh, a burly, gregarious Vietnamese immigrant to Thailand.

The two men lived opposite each other on the Mekong River—Bach on the Thai side, Keosavang in Laos. Bach's alleged expertise was in slipping contraband into the country. “He had people based at ports and airports; he had people in northern Thailand and in southern Thailand,” Galster says. “He had smugglers, people within the private sector, and government officers on his payroll.”

Keosavang, for his part, excelled in actually moving the product throughout Asia after it landed in Laos. He was aided in this enterprise, Galster says, by the import-export firms he ran across the river from Bach—legal businesses that are thought to have helped function as clearinghouses for illegal animal parts. He also owned several grim “zoos” in Laos, private menageries where an assortment of animals were raised for slaughter. Here, tigers, macaques, and other animals were allegedly held and then processed for shipment.

At the height of their business, around 2013, Keosavang and Bach Van Limh were said to be moving some 300 tons of wildlife parts a year—including 100 tons of live turtles, 100 tons of live snakes, 3 tons of lion and tiger bones, 75 tons of pangolin scales, and unknown quantities of elephant tusks and rhino horn. They were earning millions of dollars each year and using the proceeds to buy houses, hotels, expensive vehicles, and frequent trips together to Pattaya, the Thai beach resort famed for its sex industry.

But around 2014, Vixay Keosavang faded from the scene, seemingly done in by negative publicity from the arrest and guilty plea of Chumlong Lemtongthai, the architect of the faux rhino hunts in South Africa. That year, Galster says, Bach Van Limh also abruptly dropped out of view, returning to northern Vietnam. Perhaps he felt the walls beginning to close in. But wildlife contraband was still moving through the usual routes, leaving Galster to wonder: Who could be running Hydra now?

One night in Nakhon Phanom, where authorities were surveilling a group of suspected drug traffickers, an agent broke into the trunk of a suspect's vehicle. As he did, he caught the odor of urine and animal parts—a sign that the group might be moving wildlife as well. Galster was shown surveillance photos of some of the suspects and their associates, he says, and ran their names. They matched those of traders who had worked with Chumlong Lemtongthai. Galster also noticed something familiar in the photos, specifically the eyebrows and facial features of one of the men: He looked remarkably similar to the exiled Bach Van Limh.

In their bid to determine who was in charge of Hydra, Galster's team had, for months, been circling six shadowy figures. They all appeared to have overlapping friendships and business connections with one another. Curiously, the men also had similar names—Boonteung, Boon Chai, Mai Bach, Wanchai Bach, Bach My, and Chai. After analyzing Facebook data, depositions, and these new surveillance photos, Galster realized, in 2015, that he wasn't, in fact, chasing six ghosts. He and his team were pursuing only one. The names were aliases of a single person: a baby-faced resident of Nakhon Phanom named Boonchai Bach. He was the younger brother of Bach Van Limh—and he had apparently been anointed as his successor. “It was a ‘holy ****’ moment,” Galster says.

In addition to his profligate use of aliases, the younger Bach was a master of covert tradecraft. According to Galster, he fastidiously kept his name off bank accounts and property records, frequently changed his appearance, refrained from calling other members of the syndicate on his cell phone, and kept such a low profile that beyond his family, virtually nobody in Nakhon Phanom—a city roughly the size of Seattle—was aware of his existence. “He knew what he was doing,” Poolsub, the former Thai police officer, told me. Hunting Boonchai Bach wouldn't be easy, but bagging him, Galster knew, could upend Hydra.


Chumlong Lemtongthai, who was making a fortune smuggling rhino horns out of Africa—until he was jailed.
Courtesy of Freeland Foundation

Soon agents were scouring Nakhon Phanom, hunting for Boonchai Bach's headquarters. They cruised up and down the riverfront until they noticed something: a four-story residential structure that appeared to have an unusual security grille around the upper floors that obscured what was going on inside. The team surveilled the building and quickly spotted Boonchai Bach. They watched in the middle of the night as goods were loaded by henchmen, whom they followed to warehouses, hotels, and other properties. They identified a fleet of expensive vehicles that Bach used to travel back and forth across the Thai-Laotian border. But they couldn't catch him in a criminal act.

Then, on December 11, 2017, after two years in pursuit, Galster says, customs agents at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport received an alert that a Chinese national suspected of being a courier for wildlife traffickers would be arriving on a flight at noon. The customs men intercepted his suitcase before it reached the carousel—and found, wrapped in plastic, 14 rhino horns cut into 65 pieces. The shipment had a street value of more than $1 million. The officers sent the luggage along to baggage claim and waited to see what would happen next. They watched the Chinese man pluck the suitcase off the carousel and then stroll to the nearby office of Nikorn Wongprajan, a longtime airport quarantine officer. This was strange, they thought. The agents hustled over to Wongprajan's office, and there, stashed inside a locker, was the rhino horn.

Wongprajan—panicky and desperate to spare himself—agreed to help the police continue to follow the horn. The authorities trailed Wongprajan, and watched as he passed the package to one of Boonchai Bach's relatives. The cops swooped in.

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