WWF - Illegal bear bile trade rampant in Asia

WWF - Illegal bear bile trade rampant in Asia

This WWF report highlights the illegal trade in bears and bear parts in Indochina and how vested interests are driving it out of control
This dreadful trade provides raw materials for (mainly) Chinese “traditional medicine” a euphemism for impotency treatment.
The trade which is internationally outlawed and proscribed by CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wilde Flora and Fauna) involves mostly Asian Black Bears Ursus thibetanus although any old bear will do.
It goes like this: young bear cubs are taken from their mothers in countries such as Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia and are either killed and their body parts removed and rendered or are either farmed in the country of capture or trafficked through Vietnam and Laos to China.  In China they are farmed for their bile, the key constituent in the bogus “treatment” for mainly Chinese men to improve their  erections.  Needless to say the market is almost limitless and the product extremely popular.

If you are outraged by this barbaric trade you can do something about it by joining Free the Bears, an international charity devoted to saving bears by providing rescue, shelter and where possible, reintroduction to the wild. Based in Australia Free the Bears operates worldwide and has made a significant impact on the preservation of wild bears and the stamping out of exploitation of bears such as dancing bears in India.
You can find them here http://www.freethebears.org.au/

Want to Work in the Greater Mekong?

If you have ever wanted to work in conservation in the Greater Mekong region WWF are advertising for a programme manager based in Phnom Penh.

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Where Have All the Birds Gone? (On the Mekong at Least)

In 2006 I travelled down the Mekong River from Houayxay in the North, close to the Golden Triangle, to Louang Phrabang in the centre of Laos, a journey taking two days with an overnight stop at Pak Ben.  For pictures of this journey see Flickr.  I had always wanted to do this journey and it did not disappoint.  We travelled by rice boat which took passengers down river and returned with a cargo of rice from the more fertile rice fields of the South.  

As the miles quietly slipped by it was easy to imagine that you were on a boat a thousand years ago (except for the sound of the diesel engine!) or living out Apocalypse Now without the war.
One of the things that really struck me was the absence of birds on the river. You could be forgiven for anticipating many new species in such an idyllic location but it was not to be.  During the two days we spent on the river I saw only 3 Pacific Swallows (Hirundo tabitica)!  There was absolutely nothing else.
This state of affairs is hard to reconcile with the results of the WWF’s report First Contact in the Greater Mekong which covered the discovery of many new species in this region including the bald songbird which I have mentioned in my previous post Extinction is Forever .
I have puzzled over this disparity for some time and have concluded that it might be because of the proclivity of people in Indochina to eat anything that moves flies or swims.  In those parts of the country that are more heavily populated like the villages along the Mekong it is certainly the case that local markets sell huge quantities of small birds for food.  Could this be the explanation?

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Extinction is Forever

It's ironic isn't it that at a time when the loss of species of living creatures is great, we seem to be discovering new species, previously unknown to science at a great rate.

New species discovered in the last twelve or so months include:

• a new type of Clouded Leopard in Borneo and Sumatra
• a new type of Malaria (not a new strain) in the Far East
• an isopod (a sort of louse) that survives on eating fish tongues
• a parrot no bigger than a man's thumb in Papua and New Guinea (PNG)
• a rat bigger than a man's arm - in fact the World's largest - in PNG
• a new species of song bird with a bald head in Laos

And there are many others.  The one thing that links all these new species is rainforest.  That is not to say that new species are only found in rainforests, they are not, but rainforests do host a disproportionate number of the new discoveries, with no signs that the pot is exhausted. If the rainforests of the World are squandered not only will we succeed in destroying a myriad of known species, but in all likelihood a host of species we don't even know about.  And humanity will be the poorer for it.

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