news20091223nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 22 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1136
News
Wildlife trade threatens southeast Asia's rare species
Nations need to improve monitoring of effects on populations.
Anjali Nayar

{{Massive numbers of seahorses are exported from Southeast Asia, both legally and illegally.}
Chris R. Shepherd, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia}

The international wildlife trade is a major driver of biodiversity loss in southeast Asia, according to a Dutch conservation biologist working in Britain.

His paper, to be published online this week in Biodiversity and Conservation¹, reports that more than 35 million rare seahorses, butterflies, reptiles, mammals, fish and birds were exported legally from southeast Asian countries between 1998 and 2007. Some 30 million of these animals were caught in the wild, with the remainder coming from breeding programmes.

Southeast Asia is a hub of the international wildlife trade, and globalization and the increased buying power of many countries in the region is increasing the demand for rare species — as pets and for medicines and food.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), created to regulate the trade in protected species, went into force in 1975. Under the treaty, currently signed by 175 countries, including all of southeast Asia, certain rare species can be exported legally only if the authorities can show that their trade is not adversely affecting animal populations in what is known as a non-detriment finding.

But many developing countries lack the capacity to make non-detriment findings, says Vincent Nijman of Oxford Brookes University, UK, the author of the paper. The new numbers suggest that the non-detriment findings are too lenient, he says, and the legal trade is a risk to threatened species. "The only thing we know about many of these species is that they are being harvested in the millions," Nijman says. "We let this trade happen — supposedly regulated by CITES. But we must be honest, we have no idea if it is sustainable."

Species count

In all, Nijman calculated that of the 35 million animals exported between 1998 and 2007, 16 million were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. With the exception of birds, exports for all groups of animals increased or remained stable; the bird trade in southeast Asia declined dramatically in response to outbreaks of avian influenza. According to CITES, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and China are the biggest exporters of wild-caught animals, and Japan and the European Union are the most significant importers, through the pet trade.

{{The trade in animal parts for Chinese traditional medicine is booming, despite bans.}
Chris R. Shepherd, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia}

Nijman obtained his data from more than 53,000 records of imports, exports and re-exports of CITES-listed species as reported by southeast Asian countries on the World Conservation Monitoring Center CITES website.

He suggests that small tariffs on official exports could help to raise money for the biological and ecosystem research needed to make non-detriment findings, as well as the enforcement of the CITES treaty.

Navjot Sodhi, a conservation biologist from the National University of Singapore, says that the study presents some of the most comprehensive numbers of the official international exports to date on the six animal groups protected under CITES. But as a monitor of the region's trade, "there are inherently lots of holes in the study because it is based on voluntary reporting", he says. "The real trade is a few orders of magnitude more than what is reported."

Illegal trade

Chris Shepherd, acting regional director of the southeast Asian regional office of TRAFFIC, an organization that monitors the wildlife trade, says that the region has a thriving domestic market for wild meat as well as a black market that is "absolutely enormous" for some species.

Shepherd points to the trade in pangolin, the scaly anteater, which is still booming to provide meat, parts and scales for tonics and traditional medicines in China despite being banned. In the past few years, thousands of pangolins have been confiscated in southeast Asia. Shepherd says that over the past decade he has watched the illegal trade practically wipe out pangolins in Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao PDR, as well as in southern China. Now the trade has moved to Malaysian Sumatra and Borneo, but "it is only temporary until [the animals] are all gone", he says.

"I can barely give one example of a species that is being sustainably traded in the region," says Shepherd. "There is no check and balance in place to make sure these species won't be wiped out."

Part of the problem is that the penalties for the illegal trade are minuscule compared with the profits that can be made, says Shepherd. And enforcement must be ramped up quickly, because the stakes are rising. "The more endangered that species become, the higher the price," says Shepherd. "And when the value is really high, organized crime steps in."

References
1. Nijman, V. Biodivers. Conserv. advance online publication doi:10.1007/s10531-009-9758-4 (2009).