Bryan Christy

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.

Here is a very cool case of poaching in the United States that gives you a small sense of what it’s like to go after wildife criminals in countries where eating wildlife is a regular part of the culture/economy.  The poachers here are taking striped bass out of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay.  Big deal, right?  We all eat fish.  Many of us fish.  I’ve fished my whole life and never managed to catch a single striper.  How bad could it be?  Plus, the watermen of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia represent a long, honorable tradition.  When I first heard of this investigation two years ago I thought, Man, what a joke, but that kind of thinking is what lets criminals over-exploit the world around us. There is money in what we ignore, and all around the world people ignore all kinds of wildlife.

Read this amazing story and you’ll see that just as in the case of Anson Wong and other kingpins around the world, this criminal operation represents  exploitation on a commercial scale.  It is intentional, large-scale exploitation of wildlife and it is very big money.  I know a few of the guys involved (and a woman :-)) in prosecuting this case, and it’s a great success for wildlife.

Unusual task force sends message to poachers

It took 8 years and several agencies to unravel a network responsible for poaching millions of dollars worth of striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay By Candus Thomson, The Baltimore Sun  10:38 PM EST, December 4, 2010

For years, crooked Maryland and Virginia watermen went to local courts and paid their fines for illegal fishing — $50, $100, $150 — and then went back to their boats to poach some more.

They considered it the cost of doing business, investigators say. But a partnership of state and federal law enforcement officials changed the game. With the sentencing last week of the final player, the Interagency Wildlife Task Force laid waste to the largest commercial fish poaching ring in the history of the Chesapeake Bay. (more…)