Opinion: Floridas Great Snake Hunt Is a Cheap Stunt

The case against the states wildly popular python hunt.

You can read more on this over at www.bryanchristy.com/blog

For all this theAtlantic.com calls me Lisa Simpson.  Now, if only I could get a call to do a voice on the Simpsons.  Moe, a beeuh Moe. I’m dying over heah.

In 2010, I took some of the first video ever seen from inside an Indonesian reptile slaughterhouse and have written a bit about the business here.  Last year, after Swiss filmmaker Karl Amman showed The Medan Connection (viewable below) exposing the inner workings of the trade, Swiss parliament voted to ban imports of python skins from Indonesia on grounds of animal cruelty.  Since Switzerland is important to the three major buyers of reptile skins-the fashion houses Hermes, Gucci, Prada-this was significant.

.

In the wake of Amman’s film, the International Trade Center (ITC) of the World Trade Organization  in cooperation with CITES launched a project to study the python skin industry. I attended an early meeting in Geneva in which the ITC-CITES skin project was first discussed and because of what I had seen in the field and because of the role Amman’s graphic film had played in prompting the study, I pressed the participants to include humane treatment as part of their report, over the objection of some participants. Since I had begun my legal career specializing in WTO issues, I also questioned whether it was appropriate for CITES as an international trade and conservation body to lend its name to a wildlife effort conducted by the WTO, a commercial treaty organization.  Giving a CITES  ‘stamp of approval’ to a WTO project was a dangerous precedent, I suggested, and would likely not be tolerated by CITES parties if the WTO were researching trade in more popular wildlife species, such as lions.  I questioned whether governments should be funding a study that clearly benefited a small group of powerful fashion houses, who could certainly afford a study, but whose spokespeople claimed ignorance of where their snakeskins came from and how the pythons they bought were killed.

Perhilitian officers transferred every 3 years to prevent collusion with poachers

By YUEN MEIKENG

KUALA LUMPUR: Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) officers are transferred to another place every three years to prevent them from colluding with wildlife smugglers, said Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Douglas Uggah Embas on Monday.

This practice came about in the heels of the case of international wildlife trader Anson Wong, who allegedly worked together with Perhilitan officers in smuggling animals.

“The standard operating procedures for Perhilitan have been changed so that wildlife trafficking can be contained.

“We realise that there are Perhilitan officers who may have been involved in Wong’s operations. We have conducted investigations but it has not been easy,” Uggah told the Dewan Rakyat when winding up the Budget 2013 debate at the committee stage.

He said “familiarity becomes a problem” when an officer has been in the same place for too long.

“The ministry is very concerned if there are any abuse of power and will ensure that our officers have a strong sense of integrity,” he said.

He said this when answering a question raised by Lim Guan Eng (DAP – Bagan) who asked whether the ministry had conducted a probe into allegations that Perhilitan officers conspired with Wong and what measures had been taken to ensure this would not recur.

Uggah said the ministry had cooperated with international agencies to prevent wildlife trafficking and had cancelled all licenses given to Wong and anybody related to him.

To a question by Yusmadi Yusoff (PKR – Balik Pulau), Uggah said the ministry respected the court’s decision, which reduced the jail sentence imposed on Wong for illegally exporting boa constrictor snakes without a permit.

On Sept 6 last year, the Sepang Magistrate’s Court sentenced Wong to six months’ jail and fined him RM190,000 after he pleaded guilty to illegally exporting the endangered species without a permit.

Upon an appeal from the prosecution for a heavier sentence, the High Court handed Wong a five-year jail term and set aside the fine.

However, Wong, from Penang, was released after the Court of Appeal allowed his appeal to reduce the jail sentence from five years to 17-and-a-half-months.

A story by photographer Brent Stirton and me on the global ivory trade, BLOOD IVORY:  Ivory Worship, is up on National Geographic.com.

Check out the new bryanchristy.com website.  I will continue to post here on issues related to The Lizard King book, but the new site is where I’ll call home, including my new Bryan Christy blog.

I have said it before, but one of my discoveries while researching The Lizard King was that historically the most important innovation in wildlife law enforcement was not more money or more cops, but a committed court.  Perhaps the key step a country can take to reduce environmental crime is to separate environmental prosecutions from other forms of crime. When the US Department of Justice did this it revolutionized wildlife and environmental prosecutions in the US.   Today’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division enables federal wildlife and environmental investigators to take their cases directly to a knowledgeable prosecutor, who can help push a case forward.   In The Lizard King, AUSA Chris McAlilley created a mini-version of the ENRD in the Miami office of the Justice Department and that move ended up key to sending Mike Van Nostrand to prison.

And so it is with this background one should consider this news from Malaysia this week:  “The Environmental Court set up by the judiciary on Sept 3 will start operations on Monday.”  Malaysia is launching Green Courts!   Here is the full story in The Star. 

And lest anyone forget, this effort to create a green court rises in large part from the voice of  Azrina Abdullah, who called for a green court in her editorial November 2010.  The voice of committed individuals can make a difference around the world.  It takes passion and brains, and Azrina Abdullah has both.

Bill Wheeler to adapt ‘Lizard King’
Fox 2000 sets scribe for pic based on Bryan Christy book
By JEFF SNEIDER
With his adaptation of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” set to open Venice later this month, scribe Bill Wheeler has been tapped to adapt Bryan Christy’s nonfiction tome “The Lizard King” for Fox 2000.
“Hope Springs” helmer David Frankel is attached to direct. Karen Rosenfelt (“Twilight”) is producing through her Sunswept Entertainment banner…

This is certainly true for some chameleon species (the Roti Island Snake Necked Turtle might also agree, for example).  Wild-caught chameleons fare horribly in the pet trade, often dying within a year, often dying in-transit.  Here’s an online source the ASA might have started with September 2001 CHAMELEON information Network Journal No. 41,   p. 11 by Ardi Abate, or even this:   http://www.animalarkshelter.org/cin/.

Here are a couple of stories on a growing problem, or at least an always-evolving problem, the use of reptiles and amphibians as human food.  

Popular among Asians and re-located rednecks, bullfrogs in San Francisco are bringing in the chytrid virus, a deadly amphibian disease that is wiping out frogs around the world.  Here’s a well-written piece on the bullfrog dining issue by John Upton via NY Times Blog.  For more on the virus or on frogs in general go to Kerry Kriger’s comprehensive Save the Frogs, and remember April 28 is Save the Frogs Day (which doesn’t, of course, mean leftovers).

The Washington Post recently had this story on the sale of live animals in Asian supermarkets–live crayfish, eel, bass, bullfrogs, etc.–which are often raised on farms.   The Virginia state agent is wrong when he says in the story that history shows when wildlife is commercialized the population dwindles.  History shows that when wildlife is taken from the wild on a commercial scale its population dwindles, but when wildlife is farmed, as is the case with the species in the story, that is not always the case.   It depends how valuable the animal is price-wise, its reproduction rate, commitment of law enforcement, and the viability of its wild population:  rabbits are better farmed, tigers are not.  American alligators, once on the verge of extinction and now prolific and widely farmed, make a great case study.  They do not, however, make for especially good eating.

My own version of these stories occurred at a pet store not long ago.  I was looking at a pair of red-eared slider turtles swimming around a tank.  An Asian woman standing next to me said to her boyfriend, “They’re so cute.  I just want to take them home and have them for lunch.”  I have heard the same thing about lobsters in Maine, sans the cute part.

I have a post up on NationalGeographic.com regarding Anson Wong’s release.    And here is an interview in the Malay Mail.

I confess, my initial reaction to Anson Wong’s release yesterday was that of a lawyer:  the court’s decision to reduce Wong’s sentence was probably reasonable given the facts as presented.

Here is excellent and insightful commentary from Malaysia on the implications of Anson Wong’s release from Dr. Bill Schaedla of TRAFFIC SE Asia who correctly points out that there is more to the story than simply what reached the appellate court… 

The investigation and prosecution of this case also lends further support for Malaysia’s efforts to create a Green Court.

Reaction from www.nkkhoo.com