Archive for category: Articles

By: Nuruliawati, Junior Researcher for Wildlife Policy; Hendry Pramono, Market Monitoring Coordinator – Wildlife Trade Programme; Ade Indah Muktamarianti, Demand Reduction and Species Policy Consultant (Wildlife Conservation Society – Indonesia Program)

Recently on 11^th March 2018, the biggest nationwide bird singing contest, Jokowi President Goblet Singing Bird Competition 2018, was held in a popular locality in Bogor, West Java. 700 participants competed for the President Goblet 2018 and other luxurious prizes such as 30 million rupiah, an exclusive trophy and a brand new car. As stated by Omkicau, one of the biggest songbird news platforms in Indonesia, this event had 10 categories participants could compete in, ranging from the most exclusive (President, Istana, Kebun Raya Bogor and BnR Classes), which required competitors to use a specific cage, to categories which did not have any specific requirements. Not only did songbird hobbyist club members enter this competition, but the Indonesian President, Mr. Jokowi, also participated by entering his own champion White-rumped shama (Copsychus malabaricus), Murai batu to compete in the President Class. The Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya Abubakar, also attended the competition and accompanied Mr. Jokowi as he released 500 birds as the part of the event – a sign of pride or a threat to wildlife?

An entrenched yet unsustainable culture…

The bird keeping trend in Indonesia is assumed to have been growing since the 1980s, when bird markets in large cities were first established. Based on bird market monitoring conducted by WCS, we found growing, active markets in all areas of Java, including Bandung (Sukahaji Bird Market – established in 1994), Semarang (Karimata Bird Market – established circa 1980), Yogyakarta (PASTY – Animal and Ornamental Plant Market – established circa 1960), Purwokerto (Ajibarang Bird Market – establishment date unknown), Surakarta (Depok Animal and Ornamental Fish Market – established in 1980), Surabaya (Bratang Bird Market – established in 1980), Malang (Splendid Bird Market – established in 1995) and many others in the Medan and North Sumatra areas. As far as we can identify, most of these markets were established in the 20^th century. This trade has been reported to have led to changes in bird abundance from 1998 to 2011 in Sumatran forests. This study also shows that the species is strongly correlated with its price: the rarer the bird, the higher its market price.

To monitor the growing songbird market and species trends, and to support the efforts of the recent Song Bird Crisis Summit in 2017, WCS has been monitoring three active and large bird markets in Yogyakarta and Central Java. From the first year of monitoring, 54,421 individual birds from 197 species were found to be traded in these three markets. Among them, three species are listed as Critically Endangered (CR), one species is Endangered (EN), four are Near Threatened (NT) and eight are Vulnerable (VU), as per the IUCN Red List (activity report available upon request). These results complement findings from a TRAFFIC report confirming 19,036 individuals of 206 bird species were traded in 2015 in three of the largest bird markets in Jakarta.

Evidence has shown the growing bird pet trade has been triggered by the growing interest in participation of songbird competitions as well as the establishment of hobbyist clubs in each area. In terms of the cultural affinity of bird keeping, a previous study identified that most pet bird owners in Indonesia are Javanese. Socio-economic and education status have also been shown to play a role in characterising bird-keepers and determining the type of bird they own. Indonesian households owning wild-caught birds, such as the orange-headed thrush, were found to be those with higher income and education levels. Households keeping commercially-bred species were richer, but not better educated; and in comparison, there was no difference in education or socio-economic status of those keeping domestic species. This economic association has been further strengthened by a recent study confirming the correlation of richer households with a higher probability of owning captive-bred birds. Interestingly, this study also notes perceptions of the song quality of captive-bred and wild-caught birds (notably the white-rumped shama) to be contradictory depending on whether owners had wild-caught or captive-bred bird species, which along with price, favoured their choice of which type of bird they kept. Therefore, the proposal that promoting certification for breeders could enhance the capacity of a captive-breeding stock may be a viable option, if consumer demographics and preferences are taken into account.

Recognizing that the pet songbird trade is moving from physical marketplaces to social media platforms, a word cloud was created to illustrate the most frequently used words to advertise songbird sales on social media. This included species names and attractive words describing bird characteristics (from the traders’ perspective). Advertisements of songbirds for sale on Facebook and popular Indonesian online market platforms (i.e. Tokopedia, Jualo and Olx.co.id) were collected. The advertisement text was copied, and the main words, relevant to the species name, were isolated to construct the word cloud (below) using an online word cloud generator to indicate the most traded species. This word cloud identifies the white-rumped shama as the most popular traded pet bird species, which is coincidently also the same bird species that President Mr. Jokowi keeps as a pet.

Word cloud based on the birds most traded in Indonesia through online market platforms and social media.

Author note: This demand reduction study is fully funded by USAID Build Indonesia to Take Care of Nature for Sustainability (BIJAK)

Article edited by: Nafeesa Esmail

By: Alexandra Andersson, PhD Student, The University of Hong Kong

Wildlife trade has become enormous in both scale and scope. It encompasses untold tonnes of seafood, furniture, fashion items, medicines, pets, jewellery and ornaments – to name a few – traded continuously, and affecting thousands of species, many of which are now threatened with extinction.

This, granted, is difficult to manage. However, when it comes to endangered species, it is imperative to have a precise knowledge of exactly how much is harvested, processed, traded, and sold; particularly in light of the undocumented black-market trade happening in parallel for many wildlife products.

Trade records of all goods are reliant on self-reporting, whereby the countries of export and import must declare the volume of items sent or received, respectively, and report it to a central authority. Threatened species trade is regulated through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES), the records of which are available online as far back as 1975.

Problems arise when there is a mismatch in reporting quality, methods, or diligence between countries. This situation is inevitable for CITES, with its 183 signatory countries, to a certain degree. However, a quick scan of the records demonstrates that vast and consistent data discrepancies are clear in many cases, and that the true volume of many traded endangered species is simply unknown. This is alarming, considering the reason that all of these species are included in CITES is because they are vulnerable to over-exploitation, and extinction.

In a recent paper, my co-author Luke Gibson and I examined trade in hippo teeth as a case study to illustrate this. Hippos, listed on the IUCN Red List as Vulnerable, are not the only species affected by this problem, however. Since 2000, there have been 2,400 fewer humphead wrasse (Endangered) and over 100,000 additional Southeast Asian box turtles (Vulnerable) reported to have been imported into Hong Kong compared to records from exporters in Indonesia and Malaysia. Both species are transported live, and sourced from the wild. The mismatch in humphead wrasse records has been linked to potential data mismanagement and shipment monitoring issues at Hong Kong ports.

Since 1975, 90% of the world’s hippo teeth trade has passed through the city state of Hong Kong, and 75% of it has come from Tanzania and Uganda. This made analysis of this dataset (and reasons for the enormous mismatch) relatively straightforward. We found that overall, Hong Kong received 3,176 kg more hippo teeth than declared exported by Tanzania, and in 63% of hippo teeth trade transactions with Uganda, Hong Kong declares receiving more than what was reported as sent by Uganda. In total, over 14,000 kg of hippo teeth was unaccounted for between Uganda and Hong Kong between 1975 and 2016, representing more than 2,700 individual hippos – that’s 2% of the global population.

Common causes for data discrepancies include the use of non-standard measurement units, recording the number of licenses issued rather than the volume of specimens sent, incomplete or late submission of annual reports, and receiving a shipment in subsequent years to when it was sent. These causes were examined, and in this case rejected as reasons behind the discrepancies in the hippo trade data.

With no known cause for such extreme and persistent data mismatch, in our paper we put the discrepancies into the context of hippo population declines, outdated threat-level assessments, and poaching, climate change, and disease outbreaks. The resulting picture is grim, and highlights the importance of diligent control of trade volumes of threatened species and products. Without it, the effectiveness of the very apparatus put in place to protect these animals from extinction is compromised – as is their survival.

These findings are of particular significance in light of Hong Kong’s upcoming elephant ivory ban, passed in January 2018 and scheduled to take effect in 2021. Previous studies have shown that after the global 1989 ban on ivory trade, hippo teeth demand increased. The recent one-off auction of 3.5 tonnes of hippo teeth by Tanzania is troubling, as it went ahead without any official review of the pre-existing trade discrepancies, no additional traceability measures, nor renewed population estimates and updated threat-level assessments. Now more than ever, hippos need to be offered comprehensive protection. Population estimates are around a decade out of date, as is the corresponding Vulnerable IUCN Red List classification. Trade needs to be monitored, carefully. Otherwise hippos may not survive a quadruple-threat of increased demand for their teeth, mismanaged legal trade, continued poaching, and climate change.

Article edited by: Nafeesa Esmail

By: Melissa Arias, Doctoral Researcher, Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade

According to a recent report by two Bolivian researchers, between 2014 and 2016, 344 jaguar fangs destined for China were seized by the Bolivian Forestry and Environment Police. This number of fangs implies the killing of at least 87 jaguars. The authors of the report also found that radio advertisements and flyers promoting jaguar trade were being distributed in towns in northern Bolivia. The authors believe that this rise in jaguar trade may be linked to the presence of Chinese development and infrastructure companies operating in the country over recent years.  It is alleged that the fangs were being traded primarily by Chinese citizens residing in Bolivia. It also suggests a connection with the trade of tiger parts in China, which are used for medicinal purposes.

Additional evidence of jaguar trade in Latin America comes from a WWF study in Surinam, where eight people were found to be in possession of jaguar fangs or meat, and two people admitted to being regular suppliers of jaguar products. Like in Bolivia, some of the people implicated in the trade of jaguar parts in Surinam were of Chinese ancestry. More recent news on jaguar trade came from Belize in January 2018, after two decapitated jaguars were found floating in waterways near Belize City. Although Belizean authorities are offering a reward of $10,000 dollars for information about those jaguar killings, there are no further details about the poachers or the buyers.

As part of my PhD research at the University of Oxford, I have studied this emerging threat to jaguars by analysing published sources and conducting informal interviews with experts on the matter, who are based in the countries where these reports have originated. From my research, I have learned that like jaguars, this recent wave of jaguar trade remains elusive and filled with uncertainty. Those who are closest to the emerging issue of jaguar trade concur that we do not yet understand the scale of this trade, the motivations behind it, or the drivers of supply. Despite this vast uncertainty, over a dozen news reports have been written on the issue in the past year, including in reputable sources such as Nature News, National Geographic and The Guardian. The stories that are being told by the media, however, are filled with dangerous assumptions about jaguar trade that are not supported by evidence, and which could be detrimental to the survival of the species.

There are many problems with the information that is being distributed about jaguar trade. The first issue being the potential scale of this illicit activity. For example, it has been said that the seizures carried out by Bolivian authorities represent around 10% of the actual number of jaguars that could have been killed for trade in the country from 2014 to 2016, meaning that around 870 jaguars could have lost their lives in the past years to jaguar trade. This percentage is most likely drawn from customs seizure data on non-wildlife contraband, which has been used in the past to estimate the detectability of ivory in the international trade. However, not only is the 10% figure poorly evidenced for ivory, the detectability of jaguar fang trade has not been systematically monitored. If we assume that fangs are easier to trade than ivory due to their smaller size, the scale of jaguar trade could possibly be higher.

Jaguar captured by camera trap in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador. Photo credit: Diego Mosquera/Tiputini Biodiversity Station

Secondly, news reports link jaguar trade to the trade of tigers in China, which are used for Traditional Chinese Medicine. The logic behind this assumption is that since wild tiger populations are so low, wildlife traffickers are seeking substitute products in Africa and Latin America, with lions and jaguars being suitable candidates. While there is strong evidence of trade of African lion bones into China and South-East Asia, labelled as tiger bone products, the same cannot be stated for jaguars. More specifically, the data that exists on jaguar trade is concentrated on fang seizures, which are not the main focus of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Felid fangs tend to be used for ornamental purposes globally, including in countries like Bolivia, Belize and Surinam, suggesting that the emerging trade in jaguar fangs may have a different market than that of lions and tigers, and it is very likely that this market is domestic as well as international.

Thirdly, news outlets have been very quick to point fingers, blaming Chinese companies operating in Latin America and their workers for the rise of jaguar trade. However, my conversations with experts on the issue revealed that there is no evidence that the Chinese citizens implicated in the Bolivian jaguar fang seizures were associated with any Chinese corporations. In fact, they appear to be well established Bolivian residents that arrived in the country some time ago. The same appears to be the case in Belize and Surinam, where jaguar trade appears to have an even smaller connection to China and its corporations. This kind of unsubstantiated assumption involving the reputation of people, businesses and countries is not appropriate.

Fourthly, the media jumps to the conclusion that at present there is an active incentive to hunt jaguars to trade their body parts. While this certainly seems to be the case with the decapitated jaguars in Belize, it is too early to rule out other possibilities regarding the origins of the seized fangs. For example, retaliatory killing of jaguars as a result of livestock predation is well documented across Latin American countries and is one of the main causes of jaguar deaths. Therefore, it is possible that the jaguar fang trade is a by-product of conflict with jaguars or other opportunistic killings. One expert I consulted with suggested that the confiscated fangs could have originated from old stockpiles dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, when jaguars were heavily hunted for the fashion industry. To date, no tests have been done on the seized fangs to determine their age and origin.

Finally, what is most concerning about this recent media attention around the jaguar trade is that most of the news reports include information about the price of jaguar products. Disclosing such information can have serious implications for jaguar conservation as it may influence the behaviour of poachers, luring them into this potentially profitable illegal activity.

In a time of fake news and alternative facts, it is extremely important for conservationists and others to be critical thinkers and responsible users of the information that we receive on a daily basis. All of the assumptions about jaguar trade that I described above could potentially be correct, but are currently lacking a solid scientific foundation and should therefore not be treated lightly. Despite their good intentions of raising awareness, some reports are in danger of crossing the line of being unethical and irresponsible, with respect to both the animals and the humans involved. Research and collaborative efforts are needed to close these knowledge gaps and to adequately respond to this worrying threat to Latin America’s most iconic wild cat.

Article edited by: Nafeesa Esmail

By: Amy Hinsley, Post doctoral Resarcher, Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade

Whilst some of the best-known examples of traded orchids are mass-market ornamental hybrids, or the countless products containing the seeds of artificially propagated Vanilla orchids, this legal trade is not the end of the story. Although artificially propagated orchids are widespread, with more than 1 billion traded internationally over the last decade, a large-scale commercial trade of wild orchids is also occurring, creating a pressing, but little-recognised conservation problem.  This is despite the fact that all species of orchids are listed by CITES, with orchids making up >70% of the CITES Appendices.

Taxonomic breakdown of CITES Appendices I and II, showing the large proportion of orchids in the total number of species listed by the Convention. Adapted from Hinsley (2016) using updated data from UNEP-WCMC (2015). Vector images courtesy of the Integration and Application Network, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (ian.umces.edu/symbols/)

To draw attention to this issue of illegal and unsustainable trade, a new review paper published in December 2017 by an international team of authors from the IUCN Orchid Specialist Group’s Global Trade Programme provides the first global overview of the orchid trade. The authors highlight the main types of trade, which include:

Edible orchids:

In addition to the well-known Vanilla trade, there are several other examples of orchids being used as ingredients in food and drink. This includes regional demand for two products made from the ground tubers of terrestrial orchids: chikanda cake in Central and East Africa, and salep, which is used to make hot drinks and ice cream in Turkey and neighbouring countries.

Medicinal orchids:

Orchids are used in traditional medicine systems around the world, from subsistence to commercial levels of exploitation. Some of the most widespread, commercial medicinal uses of orchids include Chinese Traditional Medicine and South Asian Ayurvedic medicine, but they are also known to be used traditional and folk medicines of other regions, as well as globally in various health supplements.

Ornamental orchids:

This trade is, unsurprisingly, dominated by species with attractive flowers, but it also includes species admired for their unusual growth habits, miniature size, scent, and patterned leaves. While the vast majority of contemporary ornamental orchid trade involves artificially propagated plants and cut flowers cultivated in commercial greenhouses, it can also include wild, often illegally-harvested plants traded on commercial scales.

These trades have all been linked to over-harvesting, causing decline and extirpation of species from their natural ranges. There is also evidence from a recent study of Southeast Asian ornamental orchid trade, that countries are not benefitting equally from the trade in their own species, with countries such as Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam contributing large proportions of their species to international trade, whilst selling very few themselves. This creates a further problem related to Access and Benefit Sharing, on top of the direct conservation threats to species themselves.

The main conservation challenges associated with the orchid trade are those linked to the trade itself, such as the threats from unsustainable and illegal forms of harvest and trade, or the shifting patterns of consumer and supplier behaviour that make monitoring and regulation difficult. However further challenges are associated with the taxonomic complexity of the family, which presents management challenges for species identification, and the basic gaps that exist in ecological data and conservation status assessments, which limit sustainable management of orchid resources.  Finally, institutional barriers arise from the low priority placed on plants within broader efforts to address the unsustainable wildlife trade, and limit the legal international orchid trade in ways that constrain scientific exchange and potentially beneficial commerce.

To address these challenges, the authors conclude that the conservation community should focus on four key areas:

1. Conduct further research on trade dynamics and the impacts of harvest;
2. Strengthen the legal trade of orchids;
3. Adopt measures to reduce illegal trade;
4. Raise the profile of orchid trade among policy makers, conservationists and the public.

One way in which at least two of these priorities can be addressed is to improve the existing monitoring of international trade. Another new paper published in November 2017 demonstrated a simple method that can be used to help determine whether newly discovered orchids in trade are likely to be of wild origin. The method uses growth timings of plants to determine when legal, artificially propagated material of newly described species will be available for international trade.  With some further research, this could be used to create a ‘Species to Watch’ list to identify when a plant being traded could only have come from the wild.

Article edited by: Nafeesa Esmail

By: Freya St. John, Lecturer in Conservation Science, Bangor University

Many approaches to conserving and managing natural resources depend upon rules which restrict access to resources. However, the existence of rules alone does not guarantee compliance and information on rule breaking behaviour is needed in order to inform the design of interventions. Unfortunately, estimating the prevalence of rule-breaking and understanding what motivates those involved constitutes a major challenge as understandably, rule-breakers are generally unwilling to discuss their motives, or admit to rule-breaking, for fear of punishment or shame. A number of indirect methods have been used to estimate rule breaking in conservation. For example, satellite imagery has been used to assess deforestation rates and fish landing statistics have been compared to quantities found on markets. However, such approaches tell us little about the characteristics or motivations of rule breakers.

Across numerous disciplines, face-to-face questionnaires are used extensively to investigate gather data from people. However, when the topic of investigation is sensitive, conventional questionnaires are particularly susceptible to two forms of bias: Social desirability bias and non-response bias. To address this, a number of specialised methods for asking sensitive questions have been developed within the social sciences (Nuno & St. John 2015). These include the Unmatched Count Technique (UCT) and the Randomized Response Technique (RRT), described below. Despite some recent applications, RRT & UCT have rarely been used to study illegal resource extraction, yet they have the potential to unlock an entirely new perspective on this global phenomenon. Freya St. John, Lecturer in Conservation Science at Bangor University presented these methods during two very well received sessions at the 2017 Wildlife Trade Symposium.

Unmatched count technique (UCT): When using UCT, respondents are randomly allocated into one of two groups, baseline and treatment groups. Participants in the baseline group are presented with a list of non-sensitive items whilst respondents in the treatment group are shown this same list with one additional sensitive item added to it. All respondents are asked to indicate how many items on the list apply to them, however, they never reveal which items are relevant to them. Differences in the means between baseline and treatment groups are used to estimate the prevalence of the sensitive behaviour (Nuno & St. John 2015). For example, to investigate the prevalence of hunting as a livelihood strategy a control card might ask respondents to state how many of the following occupations were done by people in their household: livestock keeping, agriculture, small business, and teaching. The treatment card would include the extra activity of wildlife hunting (See Nuno et al 2013). The simplicity and ease of use in areas of high illiteracy are two main advantages of UCT (Nuno et al. 2013). Unfortunately, it has been shown to be of limited use for very rare behaviours due to wide standard errors around estimates (Tsuchiya et al. 2007).

Randomized response technique (RRT): Depending upon the result of a randomising device such as a dice or coin, the randomised response technique first described by Warner (1965) requires respondents to either answer a sensitive question truthfully, or to provide a ‘forced’ answer. For example, respondents may be instructed to answer the question ‘Did you kill a duiker in the last 12 months’ truthful if they roll a die and it land on 1, 2, 3 or 4. However, if the die lands on 5, they are ‘forced’ to give the prescribed answer ‘yes’ and if it lands on 6, they give the prescribed answer ‘no’. The result of the randomising device, in this example a die, is never revealed to the researcher. In this manner truthfully ‘yes’ responses cannot be distinguished from forced ‘yes’ responses so incriminating information cannot be linked to individuals (St. John et al. 2012). Thus, the randomising device offers protection to the respondent, assuring them that their positive answers cannot be interpreted as an admission of guilt.

Article edited by: Melissa Arias and Nafeesa Esmail