Hundreds arrested in global crackdown on wildlife contraband

Yahoo – AFP, Jan Hennop, 18 June 2015

Workers put ivory items on a sliding belt before being destroyed in Beijing

on May 29, 2015 (AFP Photo/Fred Dufour)

The Hague (AFP) - A global crackdown on wildlife trafficking has netted "huge" amounts of whale bones, rhino horn, ivory and other contraband, leading to hundreds of arrests, European and Asian authorities announced Thursday.

Operation Cobra III saw police in 62 countries swoop on suspected wildlife smugglers between mid-March and May, European police agency Europol said in a statement.

The operation, which was "the biggest ever coordinated international law enforcement operation targeting the illegal trade in endangered species" yielded "huge amounts of wildlife contraband," said Europol, which is based in The Hague.

Carved ivory is shown to the media

 before being destroyed in Beijing on 

May 29, 2015 (AFP Photo/Fred Dufour)

The Association of Southeastern Asian Nations' Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN), which helped organise the operation, reported "over 600 seizures of assorted wildlife contraband" and at least 300 arrests.

The suspects included eight alleged smuggling kingpins, including a Chinese national involved in Namibia's biggest rhino horn smuggling case and a notorious elephant poacher in India, ASEAN-WEN said.

In Europe alone, police recovered 11,439 dead and live specimens, including 20 kilos (44 pounds) of live leeches in Bulgaria and 10,000 dead seahorses and 400 tortoises in Britain, Europol said.

Seahorses in particular are prized as aquarium animals, ornaments or used in traditional medicine.

Around 20 million seahorses are estimated to be traded every year for traditional Chinese medicine, according to Endangered Species International.

In Spain, police seized 90 kilos of coral and animal horns and heads and a further 25 kilogrammes of coral were netted in Bulgaria.

In India, nearly 11,000 kilos of suspected tigers' bones were found.

Chinese and German police meanwhile confiscated around 800 cactus plants, while 50 kilogrammes of unworked ivory were found in France and 16 whale ribs were discovered in the Netherlands.

Eight suspected kingpins were arrested

 in the operation, including a Chinese 

national involved in Namibia's biggest

 rhino horn smuggling case (AFP

Photo/Tony Karumba)

Massive ivory haul

In Thailand, police in April netted more than four tonnes of ivory hidden in containers originating in the Democratic Republic of Congo and destined for Laos.

Thai police again seized more than three tonnes of ivory a week later in a second haul, this time from Kenya and again destined for Laos.

The 511 pieces of ivory was found in a container "marked as tea leaves transported from Mombasa, Kenya," Thai customs officials said.

The shipping of ivory has been banned since 1989 under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the tusks are worth millions of dollars (euros) on the black market.

Elephants and rhinos are mainly poached in Africa and India and their tusks and horn sent to South East Asia.

While tusks are used in a "long tradition of ivory carving", powdered rhino horn is used in traditional Asian medicine.

"Sales generate significant profits for the organised crime groups involved," Europol said.

"Investigations continue in many countries," it added.

Thai customs officers carry confiscated elephant tusks during a press conference at

the Customs Bureau in Bangkok on April 27, 2015 (AFP Photo/Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)

Europol, which supported the operation, said COBRA III was organised by ASEAN-WEN and the Lusaka Agreement Task Force, consisting of seven African countries.

"The trafficking of endangered species remains a problem in the EU and beyond," Europol's director Rob Wainwright said.

"Operation COBRA III once again shows the true global dimension of these crimes," he added.

"We will continue our efforts to fight these cruel crimes, to ensure a safe environment for endangered species in Europe and all over the world."

More than two million migratory birds killed in Cyprus

Yahoo – AFP, 9 Mar 2015

More than two million migratory birds were killed in Cyprus last autumn to feed 

an illicit taste for the delicacy on the Mediterranean island, a conservationist 

group said Monday (AFP Photo/Francois Nascimbeni)

Nicosia (AFP) - More than two million migratory birds were killed in Cyprus last autumn to feed an illicit taste for the delicacy on the Mediterranean island, a conservationist group said Monday.

The survey by Birdlife Cyprus was carried out in the key season between September and October and estimates the number of birds indiscriminately trapped in nets or with limesticks.

The group said its surveillance showed "a dramatic situation of this illegal activity sadly taking place," with the number of mist nets used almost doubling in 2014 from the year before.

It found some 16 kilometres (10 miles) of net supports active during autumn and more than 6,000 limesticks were reported from enforcement agencies and other non-governmental organisations.

Limesticks are twigs covered in a sticky substance that instantly trap birds that alight onto them, leaving them to dangle helplessly.

"With these trapping levels for autumn 2014, BirdLife Cyprus estimated that over two million birds could have been killed across the whole of Cyprus," said Birdlife, the most since it began monitoring the activity 13 years ago.

Such methods are used to catch blackcaps and song thrushes, much sought after delicacies that fetch up to 80 euros ($86) for a dozen at Cypriot restaurants.

The Game and Fauna Service, in charge of the fight against poaching in Cyprus, says the illegal trade is worth about 15 million euros a year.

Birdlife said the figures showed illegal trappings were now "out of control" and that more needed to be done by the authorities in Cyprus, including the British military at bases on the island.

'Out of control'

A clampdown on restaurants was needed to prevent Cyprus revisiting the 1990s when up to 10 million birds were estimated to have been killed.

An estimated 60 species are listed as threatened or in need of protection 

are snared in illegal Cypriot traps (AFP Photo/Menahem Kahana)

Autumn is the peak season for bird trapping with an estimated 3,000-4,000 poachers involved. The numbers for spring are lower because the birds are less plump.

Birdlife Cyprus chief Clairie Papazoglou said poaching was a "serious, persistent and growing problem" in "what has been the worst year with the highest trapping levels since the start of the monitoring programme in 2002".

Tim Stowe of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds called for zero-tolerance by the British military.

"The report highlights the illegal trapping of songbirds on the British military base has escalated and we are urging the Ministry of Defence... to resolve it before this autumn's migration," said Stowe.

A huge crackdown on trappers and restaurants was enforced before Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, but now conservationists say the government lacks the political will to eradicate the trade.

Birdlife has also called for tougher sentencing available to the courts to be enforced while pinpointing a need to change attitudes towards killing and eating migratory birds.

The law provides for penalties of up to three years in jail and fines as high as 17,000 euros but these are rarely imposed.

During winter, millions of birds take refuge in Cyprus from colder northern climates.

An estimated 60 species are listed as threatened or in need of protection are snared in illegal Cypriot traps.

France crushes huge illegal ivory haul

Google – AFP, Mariette Le Roux and Celine Serrat (AFP), 6 February 2014

French Ecology Minister Philippe Martin (L) and French ecologist Nicolas Hulot pose

 with a defense as three tonnes of illegal ivory are displayed on February 6, 2014 in

front of the Eiffel tower in Paris (AFP, Bertrand Guay)

Paris — France fired the latest volley Thursday in the world's uphill battle against African elephant poaching, crushing three tonnes of illegal ivory in a ceremony at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

The contraband, with an estimated street value of one million euros ($1.4 million), was fed into a giant crushing machine and ground into tiny fragments to be carted off and incinerated.

It was the first major crushing ceremony of ivory in Europe since a global ivory ban was imposed in 1989.

"With this destruction today... France is sending an unequivocal message to poachers, traffickers and consumers of illicit wildlife products," said French Environment Minister Philippe Martin who attended the event.

"We are resolved to continue the fight against trafficking, and to remove any temptation to recover the seized ivory" for the contraband market.

Africa's elephants are being massacred in droves in a bid to meet surging demand for ivory from the growing economies of Asia, particularly China and Thailand.

Some 22,000 African elephants were killed illegally in 2012, according to a report last year by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which warned of "local extinctions if the present killing rates continue".

The African elephant population is presently estimated at some 500,000 individuals -- about half the 1980 total.

Environmentalists say destroying confiscated ivory is the only way of ensuring that the contraband is permanently removed from the market.

France destroys stocks of seized ivory (AFP, S. Ramis /

A. Bommenel, abm/jfs)

"There are several cases of seized ivory being 'lost' from stockpiles, ie stolen, then re-entering illegal trade," wildlife crime specialist Wendy Elliott of green group WWF told AFP by email.

French environmental group Robin des Bois, or "Robin Hood", estimates that France has seized some 17 tonnes of the commodity from smugglers.

The ban has since been partially overturned to allow limited legal sales -- a move that many conservationists claim has boosted black-market demand.

Most of France's stash has been held in museums or the storerooms of police and judicial agencies.

The destroyed stockpile consisted of 2.3 tonnes or 698 individual tusks, both unadorned and engraved, as well as 15,357 ivory ornaments including bracelets, necklaces and sculptures.

Call for EU action

Martin said his country was the first in Europe since the 1989 ban to destroy seized ivory in such a public gesture, adding he expected other nations will follow suit.

"We hope that this new approach of systematically destroying seized ivory will be extended to rhino horn and other illegal animal products," said Robin des Bois president Jacky Bonnemains.

"We call upon the rest of the European Union to do the same."

Three tonnes of illegal ivory are displayed on February 6, 2014 in front of

the Eiffel tower in Paris (AFP, Bertrand Guay)

France became the latest country to destroy confiscated ivory after China, which crushed a six-tonne pile in January, and the destruction of a similar stockpile by the United States last November.

The Philippines destroyed five tonnes of tusks in June last year, Gabon destroyed 4.8 tonnes in 2012 and Kenya set fire to a pile of similar weight in 2011. Last month, Hong Kong said it would incinerate 28 tonnes within the next two years.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said such projects should only be undertaken after a full and independent audit of the stock so that none gets "lost" in the process, and finds its way back onto the market.

Environmentalists stress that illicit ivory eradication on its own will not stop the elephant massacre.

Consumers must be made aware of the destruction they were causing, said Stephane Ringuet, an expert with Traffic, a wildlife monitoring group.

"The source of the problem is in Asia, where we are seeing a disproportionate increase in demand for ivory," he told AFP.

Between 1989 and 2011, the biggest hauls of illegal ivory were in China, with more than 33,000 tonnes, according to Traffic, and 17,000 tonnes in Hong Kong.

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