NEWS
ACRES IN THE NEWS
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Today
6 November 2005
Small fines, big profits
By The Jen Lee
Tough laws should be put in place to curb the illegal wildlife trade.
A fine of a few thousand dollars is but a mere slap on the wrist when millions can be made from each shipment.
Interpol estimates the worldwide illegal trade in wildlife products is worth US$6 to $10 billion dollars ($16.5 billion) annually.
It is second only to the illicit drug trade.
A major loophole in the Endangered Species Act is how offenders are charged per species instead of per animal or specimen, said Mr. Louis Ng, president of the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres).
On Wednesday, Acres officially launched its 24-hour hotline (9783-7782) for people to report illegal pet trading.
Mr Ng wants a change in law.
He said: “It can’t be by species because then traders will just bring in one species at a time. At most they get a $5,000 fine or one-year jail.
“Considering that 1,000 star tortoises can be sold for $60, they can make $60,000. So they just have to get one large shipment through to see huge profits.”
That indeed seems the case.
On Sunday, Customs officers caught an Indonesian vessel which tried to smuggle about 40,000 pieces of dried python and monitor lizard skins into Singapore.
The skins, worth about $800,000, were to be sold here, but the ship’s captain was only fined $5,000 and jailed three months.
Mr Chris Shepherd of Traffic South-east Asia, a wildlife trade monitoring network based in Kuala Lumpur, said: “Some countries penalize per head or unit (of animal/animal product smuggled) and this obviously serves as a more powerful deterrent.”
Mr Victor Wu of WildAid pointed out another problem: Trade in pre-Cites specimens is allowed, but its not easy to tell apart old and new stock.
“It makes Cites almost unenforceable,” he said.
When wildlife laws have no teeth, it’s the animals that suffer.
I remember the 34 emaciated pangolins found in boxes by Changi Airport staff a year ago. They could not be saved.
These harmless anteaters have been caught, tied up and not fed for weeks until a large enough shipment could be made from Jakarta.
They were headed for a local company, probably to be eaten.
So because people wanted to have a taste of wildmeat, all 34 pangolins starved to death.
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