US officials say trafficking of endangered elephant and rhino parts has reached crisis levels.
The comments come after US Wildlife officials arrested a Canadian in a sting operation.
Xiao Ju Guan, aka Tony Guan, of Richmond, British Columbia, was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York this week on charges of conspiracy to smuggle endangered wildlife
The 39 year-old antiques dealer is said to have travelled from Vancouver to New York where he allegedly purchased two black rhinoceros horns for $45,000 from agents posing as traffickers.
US officials also allege that since 2012 Guan and partners have smuggled dozens of items containing rhino horns, elephant ivory, and corals worth more than half a million dollars.
They say that they began a crackdown on endangered animal parts after noticing a spike in black market prices for rhino horn, anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 per kilo.
Officials note that organized crime has become heavily involved in the trade, due to the money involved their ability to move the parts around the globe through their networks
In India, a CBC report in 2013 said officials there are investigating reports that a Chinese pharmaceutical may be supplying insurgent groups in northern India with weapons in exchange for rhino parts.
In that report, Polash Bora a naturalist who has worked in India’s Kaziranga Park for 21 years, pointed out the temptation for people, even park rangers to turn their backs on poaching. With the high prices being paid he says, “In one hour you are set for life”.
However, one of the veteran rangers said poachers are now using sophisticated communications, and silencers on the rifles, making it very difficult to catch them.
Behind the poaching of rhino is a deeply rooted belief among many Chinese that the horn, which is basically compressed hair, can cure everything from rheumatism to cancer. This is despite medical evidence that it has “about as much medicinal value as chewing one’s fingernails.” The product has been struck from the list of officially approved Chinese traditional medicines but is readily available in China and Vietnam, the second largest consumer.
“The bosses of criminal syndicates which control the trafficking go where the cost of business is very low, and that’s now in Africa,” said Christy Williams of the World Wide Fund for Nature.”If Africa starts to really crack down, then they’ll be moving back to Asia. People are always ready to poach rhino. They are only waiting for an opportunity, for the protection to go down.”
South Africa is a prime source for illegal rhino horn. Officials there reported 333 poached rhinos in 2010, but in a recent press release by South African National Parks, in 2013 the number of animals killed for their horns rose to 1,004
Vietnam’s last known rhino was found shot dead with its horn cut off in 2011. A member of the Javan rhino species, there are none in captivity and the last known living members, a mere 40-60 animals, are in a national park in Indonesia.
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