Bornean Sun Bear Conservation

Category: poaching | Date: Jan 15 2009 | By: Siew Te Wong

Dear all for your prompt comments.

As you can see from all of the poaching activities I reported here, there are several facts that we can learn:

1)      Many endangered species are being killed and poached each year in SE Asia. Together with the main threats from habitat destruction, these already endangered species can be easily being wipe out from this region and become extinct. When they are gone, they are really gone forever and will never come back again.

2)      Many of these endangered species are large mammals with very slow reproduction cycle and slow recruitment rate, they are extremely vulnerable to additional mortality that is associate with human- poaching, hunting, and killing..

3)      The reported cases here are tips of the iceberg where there are many more species of wildlife being poached and killed as we speak. Beside tiger, bears, rhinos, elephants, that we usually heard from media, there are less known species such as pangolins, tortoises, snakes, primates, and pretty much anything can move and have meat, all are fare game to feed the ever-wildlife hunger Chinese market.

4)      As a small portion of the animals poached will be consume locally in SE Asia, the majority of the wildlife products are heading to China market. The situation is getting worse as we see lately when the Mainland China market open up, economy getting better, and increase buying power, including wildlife products.

5)      The situation seem out of control, despite there are all kind of programs and actions being conducted to fight against illegal wildlife trade. The biggest driving force seem like as long as there is a market for these kind of products, there are always someone willing to take the risk to get them from some where, until a point where there are none to be harvested- wildlife extinction!

Over the past few years WILDAID http://www.wildaid.org/ has been working extremely hard to curb illegal wildlife trade and the killing of wildlife for body parts. The most well known of their campaign is the celebrity messages such as Harrison Ford, Jacky Chan, Michelle Yeoh, etc., that being aired in TV and other media across the world (http://www.wildaid.org/index.asp?CID=7&PID=507). Although the messages are nicely delivered, we not only still see the killing continue without any sign of slowing, but the area of killing is increasing in an alarming rate. The best example is all the reports of the Malaysian wildlife being poached and headed to the cooking pots in China, which we saw and heard lately.

Obviously what we have done now to stop poaching is not enough and failed. We need to do more. All of your concerns here are valid and taking action to boycott goods made in China seem a logical action to take against China. However, will this be effective? Will our voice and noise ever heard by the high-ranking politicians and top leaders in China? I do not think so. What we need is something more effective, involves bigger scale, and the action taken has no room for failure. If we ever fail, these animals will go extinct for sure.

 Over the past many years, US imposed trade sanctions pursuant under “Pelly Amendment” to countries that violate wildlife protection laws. (see    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ASV/is_4_23/ai_54023109). Obviously the Chinese government has completely failed to control illegal wildlife products from entering the country and educate the people of the country NOT TO consume these products. The rest of the world is paying a VERY high price for the eating behavior of their Chinese people by losing many valuable wildlife like tigers, bears, pangolins, etc., simply because these people would like to eat them for whatever reason. I think we need to pursue on this direction for the US government to impose Pelly Amendment to China P.R.O.C. and hope that the Chinese learn their lesson and stop the killing and eating and wildlife products.