Why are Asia's Endangered Animals so Sought After?
Date: 04-Sep-07
Country: ASIA
Here are some facts about three of the continent's
endangered animals and their commercial uses.
BEARS:
-- All of the world's eight species of bears are
endangered, and five of them live in Asia.
-- Paws from the Asiatic Black Bear and the Malaysian Sun
Bear are used to make bears paw soup, and bile from their gall
bladders -- dubbed "liquid gold" because of its astronomical
price -- is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) remedies
said to cure eye irritations, fevers and liver problems.
-- Bear bile is a legal product in China and North Korea,
but banned elsewhere as the Asiatic Black Bear is a CITES*
Appendix I animal. Chinese bear farms are thought to supply
black-market overseas networks, and have been accused of buying
bears from poachers in Myanmar and other neighbouring countries
to fill the bear farms which milk caged captives for bile.
TIGER:
-- Three of the world's nine tiger sub-species fell extinct
last century, and many scientists believe a fourth, the South
China tiger is already "functionally extinct".
-- Poached from forests and sold to traders for as little
as US$10, almost every part of Asia's biggest big cat has
commercial value. Skins are sold as rugs and cloaks on the
black market, where a single skin can fetch as much as US$20,000.
Tiger meat is marketed as giving "strength", and bones are
ground into powders or immersed in vats of wine to make
curative "tiger bone wine" tonics for the TCM market.
-- As tiger numbers plummeted, China banned all trade in
tiger products in 1993. But environmental groups say some tiger
products are still available, and tiger farmers are petitioning
for the ban to be lifted.
PANGOLIN:
-- Found only in Asia and Africa, the largely solitary and
nocturnal pangolin, or "scaly anteater" is sought after in Asia
for its meat, considered a delicacy in some communities, and
for its scaly skin, which is made into distinctively-patterned
leather handbags and shoes.
-- Pangolin scales are also revered in Traditional Chinese
Medecine. Scales are sold whole, or ground up with herbs and
pangolin blood, to cure ailments from allergies to sexually
transmitted diseases.
-- Asian pangolins are listed in Appendix II of CITES,
which allows for limited trade. But a special "zero quota" was
adopted in 2000 banning all international trade, in recognition
of the threat the thriving unregulated market posed to them.
* CITES is the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. It includes almost
170 countries, including China and all 10 members of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Sources: Reuters, The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF)
(www.wwf.biz/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/news/stories/index.cfm
?uNewsID=15278) Interpol
(www.interpol.int/Public/EnvironmentalCrime/Wildlife/Default.asp)
