The trade in wildlife: Exposed

 

In a small, nondescript office in the Animal Reception Centre at Heathrow Airport, CITES team officer Ann Ainslie points to some green bottles lined up on a shelf.

 

She picks one up so that I can clearly see the contorted, ghostly body of a small, hooded reptile staring at me with vacant eyes. It’s snake wine from Vietnam.

 

I check the label. “Usages: rheumatism, lumbago, sweat of limbs. Dosage: twice a day, each a small cup before meals.”

 

“Do people believe this works?” I ask Ainslie, incredulously. “Yes,” she replies. “But what they don’t realise is that they are fuelling the trade in that snake species. These wines used to contain Asian cobras, but they were too heavily exploited, so now the manufacturers use keelback snakes.”

 

  

Another bottle, labelled “Hippocampus elixir”, contains a seahorse and a gecko. “Tonic for body, kidney, helpful for seminal fluid, good for health,” read the instructions.

 

It is easy to be cynical about the supposed benefits of these sort of concoctions, of course, but there’s another key point: importing some of them into Britain is illegal. Do you really want to purchase one of these potions, only for it to be confiscated when you pass through customs?

 

More to the point, perhaps, do you really want to contribute to the unnecessary and possibly unsustainable deaths of wild animals?

 

 

 

Many people, while travelling abroad, have probably been tempted to take home a wildlife curio that they believe to be no more than an innocent object of desire. But doing so can be a criminal offence.

 

For instance, it is illegal to bring back a piece of dead coral to any EU country, unless it is fossilised; the same would be true if you bought more than three conch shells, without the appropriate permits.

 

Importing a pendant made from the tooth of a great white shark has been prohibited since controls on the trade in this species were put in place in 2004.

 

 

Trade regulations concerning wild animals deemed to be rare or of conservation concern are largely enforced through a global treaty called the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES.

 

At Heathrow a dedicated CITES team checks live animals and wildlife-related products detected by customs officers to make sure that they are not listed under CITES, or, if they are, that they are accompanied by the correct paperwork. If you have got a rare turtle hidden in your pocket, the team will be waiting.

 

‘Souvenirs’ that have been confiscated over the years include tiger heads, polar bear skins, tortoise shells, a pair of snakeskin boots complete with snake heads and packs of tiger-bone plasters. CITES senior detection manager Charles Mackay is cynical: “Put one on and it heals everything,” he says. "If you’ve got a severed arm, it will probably heal that, too.”

 

When I showed our photos of the packs to Rob Parry-Jones, European director of wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic, he pointed out that – though the ingredients list may tell a different story – the Chinese characters on the packet indicate that the tiger image is used for brand recognition only. The plasters are, however, claimed to contain ‘musk’ from musk deer, which also have a CITES listing. Not everything is as it seems in the complex and murky world of wildlife trade.

 

 

Mackay, a genial if slightly world-weary man in his mid-fifties, tells me that the British public is beginning to get the message that the trade in many wild animals and their derivative products is illegal. But there is still a huge problem on a global scale.

 

The explosion in demand for rhino horn has precipitated a poaching epidemic across many of Africa’s rhino range states. In other parts of the world, according to Traffic, the demand for wild-caught tortoises is rampant.

 

For example, 1,000 illegally traded Egyptian tortoises were seized by EU member states between 2002 and 2006 – a figure representing 13 per cent of the species’ wild population.

 

Mackay and his team see less of this type of wildlife crime at Heathrow, but are coming across more rare plants – many imported in various forms by traditional Chinese medicine traders. Traffic in wild orchids and other exotic plants is highly lucrative, too.

 

 

Take the powdered extract of succulent plants in the Hoodia genus from southern Africa, which for centuries has been used by indigenous people as an appetite suppressant. There has been massive interest in exploiting the plant as a slimming aid.

 

After searching the internet for just 10 seconds I found all manner of websites selling Hoodia tablets. In 2005, CITES realised that the trade was affecting wild populations of the plants, so they were listed. “We still encounter Hoodia products at Heathrow, but not in the quantities we did before,” Mackay says.

 

Then there is agarwood: resin-impregnated wood from trees in the genus Aquilaria, found all over the Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia. It is used to make fragrant incense and perfumes prized in the Middle East, but is increasingly reaching the UK, too.

 

“Suddenly, we are finding agarwood everywhere,” Mackay says, “and it’s only when you check a bottle’s ingredients that you realise it contains a controlled product.”