Vietnamese Conservationists Try to Protect Wildlife from Being Eaten to Extinction
Conservation experts estimate that the Vietnamese appetite for wildlife is responsible for increasing the country’s endangered species list from 300 to nearly 1,000 animals.
Fortunately, Vietnamese conservationists are stepping in before the country’s vulnerable species are “eaten to extinction.”
And for the first time ever, Vietnam’s Central Committee for Communication and Education (CCCE) held a conference entitled “Protecting Wild Animals to Contribute to the Sustainable Preservation of Natural Resources in Vietnam” at the Ninh Binh Province’s Van Long Wetland Nature Reserve. The event called for enforcement of strict measures against the country’s illegal animal trade, and discussed ways to protect wildlife and sustainably preserve natural resources in the country.
According to the wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC:
… this is the first time an advising body to the Viet Nam Communist Party has been directly involved in efforts to raise awareness of the illegal wildlife trade nationwide.
In attendance were representatives from World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC.
The conference, covered by Thanh Nien Daily, opened with a statement by Professor Dang Huy Huynh, chairman of Vietnam Zoology Association:
With the current situation of illegal hunting and trapping of wildlife, even hundreds of thousands of nature reserves fail to supply the demand.
“The rich” have developed a taste for wildlife
Nguyen Dang Vang, deputy chairman of the National Assembly’s Science, Technology and Environment Committee said that residents who live in the wildlife reserves should be encouraged to give up poaching. He estimated that the local market has consumes an annual average of around 3,400 tons of wild meat, or one million individual creatures, 18 percent of which are illegal.
Professor Hyunh said that prior to 1990, wildlife was poached by locals in mountain regions, mainly for their own use.
However, the demand has increased substantially, as the rich in urban areas have acquired a taste for wildlife meat. He noted the meat of rare species is served in many resorts and restaurants – and that the main groups consuming the meat were civil servants and businessmen.
Approximately 200 species are victims of Vietnam’s rampant illegal wildlife trade – and 80 of these are rare or endangered. The list includes pangolins, tigers, leopards, monkeys, bears, elephants, snakes, turtles, monitor lizards – and more.
More than 66 percent of the poached wildlife is used for food, according to Nguyen Huu Dung, deputy head of the Forest Protection Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Wildlife not used for food is smuggled to China
According to a VietNamNet article, illegal wildlife that is not used for food in Vietnam is smuggled mainly to China:
In June and July 2009, the Forest Protection Agency detected one elephant killed for its tusks in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak and five others in the southern province of Dong Nai, including baby elephants. On July 16, police seized a taxi transporting a frozen tiger and two sets of tiger bones.
… on July 29, customs officers in the coastal city of Hai Phong discovered 511 kilos of elephant tusks imported from Kenya. In December 2008, the customs agency also seized 4.7 tonnes of frozen pangolin and 85 kilos of pangolin scales from Indonesia in Quang Ninh province. In Ninh Binh province, local police have seized nearly 1000 kilos of wild animals since November 2008.
And despite these alarming discoveries, agencies believe these seizures represent only 20 percent of the actual illegal wildlife trafficking totals.
Hope for the future?
TRAFFIC and the Central Committee for Communication and Education are presenting a workshop in Hanoi in late September as part of a campaign to address and hopefully change Vietnamese attitudes towards wildlife consumption.
Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dndavis/ / CC BY 2.0
Has something gone wrong with the Cong ? Have they lost their senses ? Sounds like it’s the French taking-over again. Or was it all a “Cong” when they “defeated the Americans”