Countries across Southeast Asia are being systematically drained of wildlife to meet a booming demand for exotic pets in Europe and Japan and traditional medicine in China - posing a greater threat to many species than habitat loss or global warming.
More than 35 million animals were legally exported from
the region over the past decade, according to official figures, and hundreds of millions more could have been taken illegally.
Almost half of those traded were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. About one million birds and 400,000 mammals were sold, and 18 million pieces of coral.
The situation is so serious that experts have invented a new term - empty forest syndrome - to describe the gaping holes in biodiversity left behind.
"There's lots of forest where there are no big animals left," says Chris Shepherd of Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network.
"There are some forests where you don't even hear birds."
Seahorses, butterflies, turtles, lizards, snakes, macaques, birds and corals are among the most common species exported from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Much of the business is controlled by criminal gangs, Shepherd says, and many of the animals end up in Europe as pets. The rarer the species, the greater the demand and the higher the price.
Collectors will happily pay several thousand pounds for a single live turtle.
Vincent Nijman, a researcher at Oxford Brookes University in England, who has investigated the trade, said: "We see species that are in fashion traded in great numbers until they are wiped out and people can't get them any more. So another one comes in, and then that is wiped out, and then another ..."
"In Asia, everybody knows the value of wildlife, so people go into the forest and, whatever they encounter, they know it has a value and that there is someone they can sell it to."
Nijman's research offers the first glimpse of the size of this widespread trade. While most people know of illegal sales of rhino horn and ivory, it's the scale of the movement of lesser-known species that is most disturbing.
He analysed 53,000 records of imports and exports from countries under Cites, the international convention that regulates the sale of wildlife.
Most common species are not listed under Cites, so are not in the records. Trade in the most endangered, such as rhino and tiger, is banned.
Nijman looked at species considered vulnerable enough that trade is allowed, but controlled.
"I'm not against the wildlife trade at all. I think it is a very important economic driver for a large part of the region and a lot of people are dependent on it," he said.
"But it has to be done in such a way that you don't finish it all this year. If you organise and regulate it properly, it should go on forever."
Cites records between 1998 and 2007 showed that of more than 35 million animals exported, some 30 million were taken from the wild. The EU and Japan were among the biggest importers.
For some mammal species, the proportion sourced from the wild dropped significantly over the decade, and traders were forced to rely increasingly on captive-bred animals. Official trade in birds almost disappeared by 2007, probably because of bird flu restrictions.
The bulk of seahorses traded were dried specimens for Chinese medicine.
"The moment you look into the wildlife trade in Southeast Asia, China is the biggest challenge, because they can use everything and they will use everything."
Trade in the Asian pangolin, a scaly anteater, illustrates the problem.
Officially, countries do not allow their commercial sale and agreed a zero quota under Cites in 2000, but regular seizures show widespread trade, for medicine and meat.
"The countries closest to China get emptied [of pangolin] first. Vietnam and Laos have been drained. Myanmar has been drained and they are working south, so now Indonesia is being emptied of pangolins," Shepherd says.
"Prices are very high and in the next few years we will see pangolins being sucked out of Africa to supply the demand."
Nijman says his analysis of the Cites records, published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, inevitably underestimates the scale of the trade.
"There is always an unknown quantity of Cites-listed species that are traded without being reported, and ... probably much larger, is the trade in non-Cites species which ... we think are still common enough to be traded without controls."
One of these is the tokay gecko.
"Everyone who has been to Indonesia or Malaysia will know them because they are the ones that sit in your hotel room. You have them everywhere."
Although not listed by Cites, Indonesia has set a limit of 45,000 to be exported each year as pets. Nijman says the true number traded is much higher, perhaps into the millions.
"We can't say whether a million tokay geckos being traded a year, or two million, is too many. Perhaps there are so many it is okay. But you would think that if they set the quota at 45,000 then a million is too much."
Such geckos can be bought in villages for a few cents each, and sold for US$10 ($14.25) - a profit margin that rivals the drugs trade.
"It's a great business. No wonder organised crime gets involved, " Shepherd says. "In Malaysia if you get caught selling drugs you get the death penalty. For wildlife crime the maximum fine is about $5000."
The situation is acute in Southeast Asia, but the trade, both legal and illegal, is global, often using the internet and courier delivery. For $4000, an illegal trader based in Indonesia will send a ploughshare tortoise from Madagascar, one of the most endangered animals in the world.
Other species sell for as much as $20,000.
- OBSERVER
THE WILDLIFE MARKET
130,000
Butterflies (such as the Birdwing), mostly from Malaysia to US, EU and Canada
16 million
Seahorses, mostly from Thailand to Hong Kong, Taiwan and China
18 million
Coral pieces and 2000 tonnes of live coral, mainly from Indonesia to the US and EU
73,000
Exotic fish, mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia to Hong Kong (such as the Napoleon Wrasse)
400,000
Mammals, mostly from China and Malaysia to the EU and Singapore; includes 270,000 macaques, 91,000 leopard cats
17 million
Reptiles, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, to Singapore, EU and Japan; includes 1.3 million softshell turtles, 1.8 million cobras, 8.1 million monitor lizards, 400,000 crocodiles
1 million
Birds (such as leiothrix babblers), mainly from China, Vietnam and Malaysia, to the EU, Japan and Malaysia
Source: Cites trade data, 1998-2007
Exotic wildlife trade leaves forests silent
Species like the green tree gecko sell well on the internet. Photo / Sarah Ivey
Countries across Southeast Asia are being systematically drained of wildlife to meet a booming demand for exotic pets in Europe and Japan and traditional medicine in China - posing a greater threat to many species than habitat loss or global warming.
More than 35 million animals were legally exported from
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