Community-Based Measures Vital to Counter Bio-Piracy
Source: The Herald
Date: 23 August 2006
Author: Tonderai Matonho
Recent reports that travellers, posing as tourists, stashed away some wild animals into their bags expose the fact that illegal trade in wild plants and animals continues to flourish and the smuggling boom is proving hard to control worldwide.
One such particular case involved a group of men who were accosted by Parks officials just outside Gonarezhou National Park after a timely tip-off from vigilant villagers who had noticed the unusual behaviour of the departing visitors, who were using sideroads instead of the main road.
Neatly packed in their luggage were four live pangolins, two dead pythons, five elephant tusks and three black rhinoceros horns, three small tortoises still alive and some unidentified plant species.
The story was carried in some sections of the Zimbabwean Press. Upon interrogation, the so-called tourists revealed that they had a contact person who smuggled the goods to South Africa and Mozambique.
Another case involved two Germans, masquerading as tourists, who were found with 56 live snakes in their luggage as they were boarding a Germany-bound flight in South Africa.
The loot from the group of men in Gonarezhou and the 56 reptiles from the Germans were the latest known finds in what conservation experts say is a sinister and growing trend in bio-piracy.
Bio-piracy -- the illegal trade in animals and plants -- is, indeed, big business, involving the pillaging of millions of species each year.
In fact, according to the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA), the smuggling boom is proving hard to control as it threatens the natural resource base of the developing world.
Bio-piracy is now estimated to be the world's third biggest criminal activity, after arms and drug smuggling, notes CTA. Presenting the National Biotechnology Authority Bill recently, the Minister of Science and Technology Development, Dr Olivia Muchena, noted that there were some challenges associated with biotechnology that included the importation of genetically modified organisms and bio-terrorism.
Similarly, other experts have said that bio-terrorism posed a challenge in the application of biotechnology and there was need for an ethics committee to monitor such issues.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), it is a requirement that a bio-ethics committee be established.
The global wildlife trade is big and diverse, experts say, ranging from animals for the fashion and pet markets to plants and timber, medicinal products and live plants. Experts further note that a fair percentage of the trade is legal, conducted at sustainable levels.
However, a significant share of the business is anything but legal. According to environmentalists, for hundreds of millions of people in developing countries forests are a vital source of food, medicine, raw materials and income, and for generations many communities in Africa have known how to make the best use of these products.
"The sustainable management of forest resources, as well as their protection on the ground has been (focused on) the practices of the people living in forest zones," notes an Environment Africa journal.
With the escalating rate of the smuggling boom, paying the heaviest price is the developing world, home to many of the exotic species of flora and fauna so sought after by Northern consumers. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) regulates international trade in 30 000 different species, say CTA.
However, in many sectors, the illegal trade continues to flourish, fuelled by unchecked demand in the North and inadequate controls and enforcement in many developing countries, where smuggling is rife.
According to Parks authorities, behind the thefts are highly organised networks of criminals. Many plant, animal and insect thieves have specialised knowledge, including geographical positioning systems to help pinpoint their quarry.
Frequently, the "bio-thieves" are commissioned to steal, working from a shopping list provided by unscrupulous collectors, who will go to any lengths to acquire another trophy.
According to Press reports, recent arrests in South Africa have netted German, Japanese and Slovakian thieves, equipped with containers already labelled with names of beetles and reptiles as they planned for a raid in KwaZulu-Natal National Park. A CTA bulletin notes that parrots, wild cats, snakes leopards and apes, wanted alive for the exotic pet industry or dead for their skins or other body parts, are regularly smuggled out of their habitats in Africa.