WILDLIFE CRIME/TRADE/BREEDING

[Dzombo]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51496830

Perhaps this will have a positive for wildlife trade in general.

[Lisbeth]

Not really anything new there, that we have not already read before

[Lisbeth]

OUR BURNING PLANET

A sea change in China’s attitude towards wildlife exploitation may just save the planet

By Tiara Walters• 2 March 2020

In a global environmental leadership void created by US President Donald Trump, China could emerge as an unlikely saviour.

In the summer of 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong, China’s Communist Party leader, swam across the Yangtze River in Wuhan, Hubei’s provincial capital. In tow? Hundreds of other swimmers, his bodyguards and an armada of waterborne installations celebrating, among others, the hale-and-hearty 72-year-old’s virile image.

TIME Magazine would dub the swim one of the cult figure’s “greatest acts of political theatre”. It was the machismo roar that led millions of his followers through the blowing winds and beating waves of the hyper-violent Cultural Revolution. It also set a *putative world record with a catchy ring: 15km in 65 minutes.

Last week, Wuhan provided the first act to another possible revolution when China announced that buying and selling wild animals for food was now thoroughly banned.

A Wuhan wildlife “wet” market — so named for its thrills and spills of animal slaughter, often live — had forced Beijing to make the call. Authorities had traced the deadly Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak to unsanitary conditions at the market — a cog in a multibillion-dollar trade before a temporary ban was slapped on the industry in January.

‘Most monumental announcement’ since ivory ban

Declared by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, the ban may be tighter, but it is not yet clear if it is permanent.

Nonetheless, conservationists have praised it as a potential turning point in a decades-long activist campaign to choke an industry that not only holds non-human life to ransom. Threatening to quarantine much of the human planet, the outbreak has taken 2,800-plus human lives in China and sickened 87,000-plus people globally.

The ban’s new rules include forbidding the consumption of all terrestrial animals, wild and captive; and making hunting, transporting and trading wildlife a criminal offence. They also seek to refine which animals can be used for science, medicine and display; and recognise the need to support producers affected by the ban.

Offenders may be fined up to 50,000 yuan (around $7,000) for eating wildlife; and “people running wildlife businesses” may have to cough up as much as 200,000 yuan. Licences would be revoked, official state news agency Xinhua noted.

“China’s statements indicate a sea change in the government’s attitude towards wildlife exploitation since the 2002-03 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. This is reflected in changed public values,” WildAid CEO Peter Knights told Daily Maverick. Knights has had some success lobbying the Chinese government after his organisation joined forces with basketball icon Yao Ming to raise awareness of the destructive shark-fin trade. The consumption of shark-fin soup has fallen by more than 80% in recent years.

“This is China’s most monumental announcement since it banned ivory in 2017,” Humane Society International said in a statement. The “decision has the potential to affect even more animals, because of the sheer volume and number involved in the wildlife trade”.

The welfare organisation hailed the move as China’s “most decisive action yet”. It “elevates the ban from administrative action to the level of national law”.

TRAFFIC, the wildlife-trade monitoring network, praised “China’s firm and targeted measures”.

A boiling point in the political pressure cooker

The urgency for a comprehensive ban had piled on Beijing in early February when Chinese scientists announced the makings of a perfect storm: the pangolin, said to be among the world’s most trafficked and endangered mammals, might be an intermediate carrier of Covid-19.

On the same day, Daily Maverick broke the news that the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas had isolated the critically endangered Malayan (Sunda) pangolin (Manis javanica) as a possible vector.

Both teams — who worked independently for separate institutions — cautioned the findings were preliminary and still due for peer review. The initial Chinese findings, which have since been revealed to focus on an aspect of the virus rather than the whole genome as initially stated, have been challenged by some scientists.

Even so, the two announcements represented the publication of similar research by independent teams at virtually the same time, helping to catapult the species’ plight into an international talking point. The debate provoked fears that ne’er-do-wells may retaliate and kill pangolins. However, it also prompted calls to harness the charismatic scaly animals as a flagship to end the trade for good.

Formally declaring the ban’s stricter measures, Xinhua illustrated its report with an image of a Sunda pangolin. The decision aimed “to safeguard ecological safety” — although it is likely that pangolin scales will still be consumed under medicinal regulations. Campaigners are not happy about this.

An update to the state news report changed the wording from “ecological safety” to “ecological security” — this may be taken as a signal that the Standing Committee is eager to show the ban is not just a conservation decision, but a security decision, too. As a 2019 climate report by the US Department of Defence shows, there is military recognition at the highest levels of government that fundamental threats to ecological security endanger human safety in the most existential sense of the word.

These are all contributing factors that show Beijing may enforce a permanent ban of a trade that has repeatedly enabled a petri dish for outbreaks with cumulative costs of which are running into billions of dollars.

Or, in the case of Covid-19, potentially $1-trillion.

Bird flu. Swine flu. Ebola. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. SARS. Each of these zoonotics cuts a forensic trail to people who interacted with sick or dead animals at some point.

“This crisis has done more for conservation than all western NGOs have achieved in decades of being in China and spending billions,” said Karl Ammann, an investigative journalist and activist whom a 1999 New York Times article names as the “chief nemesis of the bushmeat trade, and persona non grata to governments whose indifference he exposes”. In the 1990s and 2000s, Ammann blew the lid off the consumption of primate bushmeat, the source of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that mutated into human HIV.

As long as this ban is permanent, simple to understand and gets the full weight of the Standing Committee’s authority, China could even find itself in a favourable position: besides the European Union, it would be the most influential superpower with a multilateral conservation approach at a time that geopolitics, and long-term collective interest, demand just this.

In fact, US President Donald Trump’s controversial attempts to create a policy environment that puts industry above sustainability may hand Chinese President Xi Jinping the opportunity to define himself in opposition to a dearth of US environmental leadership. This, despite vocal opposition on domestic soil to Trump’s policies by US civil society, the private sector and majority of lawmakers.

Usurping US dominance

Such a potential axis shift may have seemed a bridge too far in the pre-Covid-19 era — one in which former US president Barack Obama’s pro-environment, multilateral policies provided a useful counterpoint to criminals riding roughshod over China’s wildlife laws — and who continue to fan out across dwindling wilderness.

Indeed, there is no small irony to suggesting that the country which plunged the world into what may yet become a global shutdown could also lead a multilateral effort to revamp geopolitics.

There is also the country’s troubling human-rights record, which should presumably ring loudly in every person’s amygdala.

Yet, multilateral diplomacy could prove to be China’s metier as the Anthropocene clock reveals its biggest reckoning: that natural disaster does not respect sovereign borders.

“It’s antiquated to say China could not take a global environmental leadership role. The US looks at the next election. China looks 50 years ahead. Not many governments do that,” said Knights.

“When you work on that timeline, you have to start taking global developments like climate change seriously — and much of the rest of the world is now looking for ‘long-view’ leadership. China, as the world’s superpower, is stepping into that void.”

Dr Peter J Li, associate professor of East Asian politics at the University of Houston-Downtown, Texas, echoed these views. He is also a China policy specialist with Humane Society International.

“President Xi has an opportunity to act in favour of global environmental protection. It is never too late for China to act. Xi can plan long-term development,” said Li.

“Trump’s concentration is the next election. I don’t see environment and wildlife inside and outside the US as a concern for Trump.”

Trump’s strategy missteps range from the ecology to cutting back on the US State Department, added Knights.

The US officially leaves the UN Paris Climate Accord in November. By forfeiting the US seat at the world’s biggest climate round table, Trump, for better or worse, gives the world’s next-biggest single economy more clout to broker an exceedingly potent chapter in geopolitics — climate negotiations.

The move also hands China more power at the intersection of the world’s most influential — if flawed, critics say — environmental treaties: the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. These treaties are not formally connected, but species trade diplomacy is more important on a heating planet that may well simplify ecosystems.

Trump’s Paris departure, Knights pointed out, is “a real step back from all sorts of international engagement”.

Or, as an observer who did not want to be named lamented: “Yoh. Trump. He seems to be consciously and actively planning to trash the planet. You think he’s an alien who wants to get rid of unwanted life forms — us?”

China may be the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, but the European Commission’s vice-president, the Dutch socialist Frans Timmermans, told Daily Maverick during a visit to Cape Town this week that he was optimistically cautious about China’s potential to capitalise on shifting geopolitics.

“Even before Trump, China was decisive on reaching an agreement in Paris. It has built a reputation that it deserves as global leader,” said Timmermans, who heads up the European Union’s Green Deal. However, he was concerned the Covid-19 outbreak would hamper China’s ability to meet its Paris commitments. They are “sitting on the fence a bit”.

“It is clear there is a strong willingness of Chinese leadership to be part of those who go ahead … [It’s about] looking at the numbers and seeing whether they can afford it at this stage — given other international developments.”

‘No nationalist rhetoric will scare off a virus’

On the ballooning US debt bill — despite bullish claims of domestic economic growth — Timmermans was much starker.

“Look at the debt Trump is building up. That’s coming back at some point — if we reduce international relations to transactional relations between sovereign nations, we misunderstand the complete and integrated nature of today’s world,” he warned.

“There is no national border that is going to stop coronavirus. There is no level of nationalism in your rhetoric that is going to scare off a virus. This is not some foreigner’s fault. This is what happens in an integrated world and this is something we will have to face within the collective responsibility — and I think the climate crisis is the most important.”

Online watchdog Climate Action Tracker says China’s commitments are “highly insufficient”. However, the watchdog adds, as “the world’s largest consumer of coal and the largest developer of renewable energy — the choice [China] makes, domestically and abroad, between the technology of the past versus the renewable future will have a lasting effect on the world’s ability to limit warming to 1.5˚C”.

China’s charm offensive

Right now, a teensy viral villain is playing Russian roulette with one of the brightest feathers in Xi’s cap: lifting all 1.4-billion Chinese out of poverty.

That target is still within the central government’s reach, China’s South Africa Ambassador Lin Songtian insisted at a recent press conference. A forceful personality with a mischievous grin, the ambassador had been on a spirited tour throughout South Africa, hammering home a single maxim:

“Keep calm — China’s Communist Party has everything under control.”

Watching poverty alleviation disintegrate just beyond their fingertips may be too much for Beijing to bear. This is yet another contributing factor that plays into the possibility of a more sustained dusting down of criminal activity.

Said Ammann, who has spent decades documenting the dark side of trade in Asia’s backstreets:

“In China, face loss is worse than share prices declining by 50%.”

At a junket in Bishopscourt, that Cape Town bastion of leafy privilege, there was hardly a crack in the veneer of the Chinese embassy’s well-oiled staff complement. If they felt under siege, this showed only in their eagerness to impress.

A driveway attendant gesticulated the press corps’ vehicles into an awkward line of double-parking. (Daily Maverick declined, later avoiding an international incident between journalists rushing out to be the first to file.)

Another staff member stood to attention in tie and suit with an open umbrella, providing shelter against a freak summer storm. Inside, a flotilla of media officers glided up to journalists, producing business cards and offering quotable insights, always polite.

While Daily Maverick interviewed the ambassador, they hovered nearby, afterwards admitting on the sly: “Our boss keeps us on our toes.” (That is public-relations talk for the challenges of “managing” an ambassador who does not always stick to the script).

“Pangolin is one of the endangered species, right? They are not allowed in the market like rhino horn is not allowed. The ivory product is not allowed. But unfortunately some snake … I mean how do people eat the bat!” the ambassador said, and laughed in italics at these apparent non-sequiturs. He shrugged, seemingly at a loss for words.“I don’t know.”

He underlined, frequently, that most “educated” Chinese — including his “own boy” studying in the US — disassociated themselves from the wildlife trade and its “old traditions”.

In January an online poll by the Peking University Centre for Nature Society found that 97% of some 100,000 participants were against eating wild animals. Nearly 80% rejected using wildlife products. Knights said the poll was “probably biased to more educated people, but, you know, that’s a large proportion of the Chinese population now.”

By contrast, 14 million people worked in wildlife and trade consumption before the ban, some media have suggested.

“A minority is still a minority; the majority have changed,” Lin said when Daily Maverick pointed out a minority in China could mean tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people.

“The dog is a member of the family. It’s the baby,” he continued. “Do something against the dog, people give you strange eyes.”

This embassy scene was hardly the tableau of an evil empire plotting to overthrow the planet with biological warfare, as some unsubstantiated conspiracy rumours have suggested.

Lin was upbeat about the prospects of a permanent ban.“It’s possible,” he said. “Of course.”

A single spark, a prairie fire

If authorities’ recent crackdown is a harbinger, the results of a permanent ban could be impressive, even if more trade goes underground amid deeply held cultural preferences and newer fads, which criminals are good at inventing. (This is what Ammann warns about in his 2018 investigation on the rhino-horn trade.)

“Some 5-10% of what was going on legally will carry on underground. People do things illicitly for reasons ranging from avoiding taxes to health regulations,” added Knights.

“But a main argument for a blanket ban is that it’s easy for everybody to understand. Anyone can enforce it. The key is public education. Keeping the law simple and clear.”

So far, Chinese authorities say they have closed down some 20,000 wildlife farms; 2,550-plus people have been “punished” for wildlife crimes, reported state news. Online, “750,000 pieces of information about wildlife trade were removed or blocked”, while “17,000 online stores or accounts were closed”. Secret codes would be “screened out”.

Knights hoped China would also play a role to help “countries around the world. It’s no good simply banning the trade in China. The same risks are very much out there in Asia as well as Africa.”

Current revisions also create the platform for lawmakers to revisit critical omissions in anti-cruelty legislation. Updates would go further to prevent the conditions that tolerate unsanitary practices, Li suggested.

“China does NOT have an anti-cruelty law,” he stressed. One reason is “strong opposition from the country’s business interests for fear such a law would slow economic growth”.

Legislative details of how the full ban will express itself in real terms are likely to emerge in the coming days and weeks.

A single spark can start a prairie fire, one that renews rather than destroys.

“This coronavirus and the global public health crisis have created a situation that vilifies all Chinese in the eyes of some people outside the country,” said Li. “Most embarrassing to the government is that the country’s wildlife policy has been controlled by business interests.”

He wryly suggested China could present its “soft power” to the world: “A more powerful soft power than presenting panda bears.”

For his part, Ammann had little time for ban fanfare. He had predicted the government would prohibit the trade just before it announced the ban.

“Yes, they will outlaw the wet markets,” he quipped. “They are happy for trade to go even more underground than it has always been.”

But even a cynic like Ammann can still dream.

“We will be in a border enclave on the Laos side soon and will see if anything has changed. I doubt it.”

Then he typed in the rough, unpunctuated hand of someone with too much to do.

“But let’s face it what is happening now is what is needed if the planet is meant to have a chance.” DM

*Mao’s historical swim may be comparable — in distance only — to the 18km stretch between Cape Town’s Clifton Beach and Robben Island, conquered in a record of just under four hours in 1987. Event reports would thank a powerful current for aiding Mao’s remarkable performance. He was, by all accounts, an accomplished swimmer. However, international endurance swimmer Ryan Stramrood noted that a 72-year-old is not likely to cross the Yangtze at a rate faster than 5.8km/h, even when it is in full flow.

[Flutterby]

Melanie Verwoerd: The one thing we know for sure about the coronavirus

06:00 04/03/2020 Melanie Verwoerd

So as if the coronavirus isn’t enough it now turns out that lion bones from South Africa might be poisoning or infecting the Chinese with TB, writes Melanie Verwoerd

Between all the uncertainty about COVID-19 (the coronavirus), there is one thing that we know for sure: it originated from the cruel and inhumane trade of live wild animals.

I'm always amazed at the arrogance of humans. We seem to think that we can control and plunder nature and torture animals without any negative consequences to the human race.

Yet, we are seeing how our disregard for our natural surroundings is raising the earth's temperature causing floods, fires and the rising of the sea levels.

Scientists keep telling us that we are about eight years away from a point of no return, and yet we take almost no notice.

Companies continue to pollute in the chase for profit.

We use and discard plastic that ends up suffocating our oceans and killing off our fish.

We consume at a rate that will almost certainly make this earth uninhabitable for future generations and we either participate in or allow unthinkable cruelty to animals.

The point is that there are consequences.

I will never be able to understand the psychology of hunting - of looking something beautiful in the eye and then killing it deliberately. I cannot stand cruelty to animals – of any kind.

However, even if you don’t agree with my feelings or beliefs about animals, the coronavirus has yet again proven that nature can and will hit back.

We now have an outbreak that we don’t seem to understand or are able to control.

A virus that moves fast and that can be as, if not more, deadly than any form of plague we have ever known - all because of the trade and consumption of wild animals.

Even the Chinese government has recognised this and has now made it illegal to trade in wildlilfe.

The ban imposed on 24 February 2020 by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (China's top legislature) covers all forms of wildlife consumption.

It is long overdue and hopefully it will last beyond this epidemic.

Of course it is easy to think that this is all a Chinese story and that we as South Africans have no responsibility in it. Yet we do.

According to TRAFFIC, between 2006 and 2015, almost 1.4-million live animals and plants, 1.5-million skins and two million kilograms of meat from CITES-listed species were exported from 41 African countries to 17 countries in East and Southeast Asia.

South Africa proved to be the largest seller of live birds, mammals and plants.

The lion bone industry is another example.

This is a truly disgraceful industry that is directly condoned by the Department of Environmental Affairs.

In 2017, the then Minister of Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, controversially, and in the face of vociferous opposition against this trade, set the annual export quota at 800 lion skeletons.

Then in 2018 Molewa, without stakeholder participation, took the decision to almost double the quota to 1 500 skeletons.

The department would like us to believe that this is all part of "sustainable use" and even good for the lions' protection.

I think even a three-year-old would be able to grasp that breeding lions in captivity, keeping them in crowded cages and then killing them is not good for lions.

However, it now seems, that we (humans) are also now… well, shooting ourselves in the foot.

As Don Pinnock recently highlighted in an article on the lion bone trade, it turns out that these bones might carry high levels of TB and could be infused with dangerous tranquilisers used to pacify the animals before they’re shot.

Veterinary scientists are warning that this could have serious health consequences for those in Asia who consume these bones.

So as if the coronavirus isn’t enough it now turns out that lion bones from South Africa might be poisoning or infecting the Chinese with TB.

The Chinese government's ban will stop the export of bones to China, but these bones also find their way to Vietnam, Korea and other Asian countries.

According to Pinnock, both the Ministers of Health and Agriculture have been made aware of the potential danger, yet neither have responded.

I certainly hope that Minister Pandor will also be informed of this, since this could potentially become a huge international scandal for South Africa.

Those who profit handsomely from this horrible industry, will claim that they are not breaking any laws.

Possible poisonings aside, that might be true, but let's be clear that there is a bigger issue at stake here.

The contemptuous way China has treated wildlife has resulted in thousands of deaths.

Corona will without doubt spread around the world including South Africa and thousands more will die globally.

So even if not all of us care about animals, we should for the sake of humankind, insist on the banning of all wildlife trade immediately.

- Melanie Verwoerd is a former ANC MP and South African Ambassador to Ireland

Source: https://m.news24.com/Columnists/Melanie ... eMZT0C3viE

See www.melanieverwoerd.co.za

[Lisbeth]

Nature always hits back in one way or another. When the natural equilibrium is disturbed and the chain breaks somewhere, there is always an answer back: Weather changes, extinctions in both flora and fauna or in this case a dangerous epidemic outbreak

[Dzombo]

Seems like nothing is going to change

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/05/asia ... index.html

[Richprins]

Hong Kong (CNN)


A strict ban on the consumption and farming of wild animals is being rolled out across China in the wake of the deadly coronavirus epidemic, which is believed to have started at a wildlife market in Wuhan.


Although it is unclear which animal transferred the virus to humans -- bat, snake and pangolin have all been suggested -- China has acknowledged it needs to bring its lucrative wildlife industry under control if it is to prevent another outbreak.
In late February, it slapped a temporary ban on all farming and consumption of "terrestrial wildlife of important ecological, scientific and social value," which is expected to be signed into law later this year.

But ending the trade will be hard. The cultural roots of China's use of wild animals run deep, not just for food but also for traditional medicine, clothing, ornaments and even pets.
This isn't the first time Chinese officials have tried to contain the trade. In 2003, civets -- mongoose-type creatures -- were banned and culled in large numbers after it was discovered they likely transferred the SARS virus to humans. The selling of snakes was also briefly banned in Guangzhou after the SARS outbreak.
But today dishes using the animals are still eaten in parts of China.
Public health experts say the ban is an important first step, but are calling on Beijing to seize this crucial opportunity to close loopholes -- such as the use of wild animals in traditional Chinese medicine -- and begin to change cultural attitudes in China around consuming wildlife.

Markets with exotic animals
The Wuhan seafood market at the center of the novel coronavirus outbreak was selling a lot more than fish.
Snakes, raccoon dogs, porcupines and deer were just some of the species crammed inside cages, side by side with shoppers and store owners, according to footage obtained by CNN. Some animals were filmed being slaughtered in the market in front of customers. CNN hasn't been able to independently verify the footage, which was posted to Weibo by a concerned citizen, and has since been deleted by government censors.
It is somewhere in this mass of wildlife that scientists believe the novel coronavirus likely first spread to humans. The disease has now infected more than 94,000 people and killed more than 3,200 around the world.
The Wuhan market was not unusual. Across mainland China, hundreds of similar markets offer a wide range of exotic animals for a range of purposes.
The danger of an outbreak comes when many exotic animals from different environments are kept in close proximity.
"These animals have their own viruses," said Hong Kong University virologist professor Leo Poon. "These viruses can jump from one species to another species, then that species may become an amplifier, which increases the amount of virus in the wet market substantially."
When a large number of people visit markets selling these animals each day, Poon said the risk of the virus jumping to humans rises sharply.
Poon was one of the first scientists to decode the SARS coronavirus during the epidemic in 2003. It was linked to civet cats kept for food in a Guangzhou market, but Poon said researchers still wonder whether SARS was transmitted to the cats from another species.

Annie Huang, a 24-year-old college student from southern Guangxi province, said she and her family regularly visit restaurants that serve wild animals.
She said eating wildlife, such as boar and peacock, is considered good for your health, because diners also absorb the animals' physical strength and resilience.
Exotic animals can also be an important status symbol. "Wild animals are expensive. If you treat somebody with wild animals, it will be considered that you're paying tribute," she said. A single peacock can cost as much as 800 yuan ($144).
Huang asked to use a pseudonym when speaking about the newly-illegal trade because of her views on eating wild animals.
She said she doubted the ban would be effective in the long run. "The trade might lay low for a few months ... but after a while, probably in a few months, people would very possibly come back again," she said
Beijing hasn't released a full list of the wild animals included in the ban, but the current Wildlife Protection Law gives some clues as to what could be banned. That law classifies wolves, civet cats and partridges as wildlife, and states that authorities "should take measures" to protect them, with little information on specific restrictions.
The new ban makes exemptions for "livestock," and in the wake of the ruling animals including pigeons and rabbits are being reclassified as livestock to allow their trade to continue.

Attempts to control the spread of diseases are also hindered by the fact that the industry for exotic animals in China, especially wild ones, is enormous.
A government-sponsored report in 2017 by the Chinese Academy of Engineering found the country's wildlife trade was worth more than $73 billion and employed more than one million people.
Since the virus hit in December, almost 20,000 wildlife farms across seven Chinese provinces have been shut down or put under quarantine, including breeders specializing in peacocks, foxes, deer and turtles, according to local government press releases.
It isn't clear what effect the ban might have on the industry's future -- but there are signs China's population may have already been turning away from eating wild animals even before the epidemic.
A study by Beijing Normal University and the China Wildlife Conservation Association in 2012, found that in China's major cities, a third of people had used wild animals in their lifetime for food, medicine or clothing -- only slightly less than in their previous survey in 2004.
However, the researchers also found that just over 52% of total respondents agreed that wildlife should not be consumed. It was even higher in Beijing, where more than 80% of residents were opposed to wildlife consumption.
In comparison, about 42% of total respondents were against the practice during the previous survey in 2004.
Since the coronavirus epidemic, there has been vocal criticism of the trade in exotic animals and calls for a crackdown. A group of 19 academics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and leading universities even jointly issued a public statement calling for an end to the trade, saying it should be treated as a "public safety issue."
"The vast majority of people within China react to the abuse of wildlife in the way people in other countries do -- with anger and revulsion," said Aron White, wildlife campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency.
"I think we should listen to those voices that are calling for change and support those voices."

A significant barrier to a total ban on the wildlife trade is the use of exotic animals in traditional Chinese medicine.
Beijing has been strongly promoting the use of traditional Chinese medicine under President Xi Jinping and the industry is now worth an estimated $130 billion.
As recently as October 2019, state-run media China Daily reported Xi as saying that "traditional medicine is a treasure of Chinese civilization embodying the wisdom of the nation and its people."
Many species that are eaten as food in parts of China are also used in the country's traditional medicine.
The new ban makes an exception made for wild animals used in traditional Chinese medicine. According to the ruling, the use of wildlife is not illegal for this, but now must be "strictly monitored." The announcement doesn't make it clear, however, how this monitoring will occur or what the penalties are for inadequate protection of wild animals, leaving the door open to abuse.
A 2014 study by the Beijing Normal University and the China Wildlife Conservation Association found that while deer is eaten as a meat, the animal's penis and blood are also used in medicine. Both bears and snakes are used for both food and medicine.
Wildlife campaigner Aron White said that under the new restrictions there was a risk of wildlife being sold or bred for medicine, but then trafficked for food. He said the Chinese government needed to avoid loopholes by extending the ban to all vulnerable wildlife, regardless of use.
"(Currently), the law bans the eating of pangolins but doesn't ban the use of their scales in traditional Chinese medicine," he said. "The impact of that is that overall the consumers are receiving are mixed messages."
The line between which animals are used for meat and which are used for medicine is also already very fine, because often people eat animals for perceived health benefits.
In a study published in International Health in February, US and Chinese researchers surveyed attitudes among rural citizens in China's southern provinces to eating wild animals.
One 40-year-old peasant farmer in Guangdong says eating bats can prevent cancer. Another man says they can improve your vitality.
"'I hurt my waist very seriously, it was painful, and I could not bear the air conditioner. One day, one of my friends made some snake soup and I had three bowls of it, and my waist obviously became better. Otherwise, I could not sit here for such a long time with you," a 67-year-old Guangdong farmer told interviewers in the study.

China's rubber-stamp legislature, the National People's Congress, will meet later this year to officially alter the Wildlife Protection Law. A spokesman for the body's Standing Committee said the current ban is just a temporary measure until the new wording in the law can be drafted and approved.
Hong Kong virologist Leo Poon said the government has a big decision to make on whether it officially ends the trade in wild animals in China or simply tries to find safer options.
"If this is part of Chinese culture, they still want to consume a particular exotic animal, then the country can decide to keep this culture, that's okay," he said.
"(But) then they have to come up with another policy -- how can we provide clean meat from that exotic animal to the public? Should it be domesticated? Should we do more checking or inspection? Implement some biosecurity measures?" he said.
An outright ban could raise just as many questions and issues. Ecohealth Alliance president Peter Daszak said if the trade was quickly made illegal, it would push it out of wet markets in the cities, creating black markets in rural communities where it is easier to hide the animals from the authorities.
Driven underground, the illegal trade of wild animals for consumption and medicine could become even more dangerous.

"Then we'll see (virus) outbreaks begin not in markets this time, but in rural communities," Daszak said. "(And) people won't talk to authorities because it is actually illegal."
Poon said the final effectiveness of the ban may depend on the government's willpower to enforce the law. "Culture cannot be changed overnight, it takes time," he said.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/05/asia ... index.html

[Richprins]

This is a marvelous first step?

Nature always finds a way, as Lis and Jurassic Park say!

[Lisbeth]

Illegal wildlife trade: Stern public warning after three arrested in North West

2020-03-10 15:18 | Duncan Alfreds


A pair of Leopard tortoises. (Tengku Bahar, AFP)

The National Council of SPCAs (NSPCA) warned the public not to buy wildlife after three men were arrested and animals rescued along the R556 Sun City Road in North West province.

"They have appeared in court and the one suspect is busy doing a plea bargain for a previous case. We will follow these cases through to fruition," NSPCA Wildlife Protection Unit manager Douglas Wolhuter told News24.

Four leopard tortoises were rescued on Sunday and taken to the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinarians for rehabilitation.

Tortoises and chameleons are commonly traded in the area.

Wolhuter said one of the men had multiple arrests for the same crime and advised the public not to purchase wildlife from illegal traders along the roadside.

"A lot of people are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, not knowing that they are supporting the trade. We've advised many people not to ask whether they are for sale. Instead, get it on video and send it to us - hopefully with an affidavit - and we will build those cases up."

Welfare of wildlife

According to the NSPCA's annual report for 2019, government policy inadvertently led to an increase in the illegal trade of wildlife.

"The aggressive, highly commercialised wildlife industry supported by the government's sustainable use policy, combined with the lack of regulation and legislative failings with regard to the welfare of wildlife, stirred by demand for reduced controls by the wildlife industry, the welfare of wildlife at all levels of the South African trade chain has increased in urgency," reads the report.

Wolhuter said the policy did not always account for the welfare of wildlife.

"Often what happens is that a trade in a specific species will be approved before there are any norms and standards put in place."

He highlighted the case of lion bone quotas being increased without regard for the welfare of lions.

In that case, the Western Cape High Court ruled the 2018 lion bone quota of 1 500 bones was unlawful.

Wolhuter called for a prison sentence for the tortoise traders.

"These offenders need to feel the full might of the justice system as they continue to disregard the laws of South Africa and the sentience of these creatures. We believe the only appropriate sentence is an extended prison sentence."

Buyers

He said people often saw these animals in poor condition and thought that by buying them they were doing a good deed.

Children were also unwittingly involved in the crime, he added.

"This crime also involves innocent members of society - children are often used unknowingly to catch these animals and form part of the criminal activity; it is a crime that is destroying our natural heritage and society as a whole."

The operation to arrest the traders was conducted by the NSPCA, the North West Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism, the South African Police Services Stock Theft Unit, the North West Parks Board and the Royal Bafokeng Reaction Force.

Wolhuter urged people not to support the trade.

"Without the buyers this trade wouldn't exist."

The leopard tortoise (Geochelone pardalis) is listed on Cites Appendix II, which means it is not currently threatened. However, it may be threatened with extinction should trade not be closely controlled.

[Alf]

One of the men had multiple arrests but still he is out on the street being a criminal