Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings

The recent killing of a Sumatran tiger in Jambi's Rimbo zoo in Indonesia, can be added to a number of similar abductions (and illegal sales) of captive tigers into the black market. China has reported similar thefts out of zoos within China. Vietnam has reported illegal sales of tigers out of zoos into the black market. (I reported all of this last year in my illegal tiger part trade- it's not new).

Given the low enforcement and reporting rates for this sort of crime there's likely to be a lot more of this. The reality of course, is that getting hold of captive tigers is actually a lot easier than trying to hunt them in the wild. You need local contacts and a bigger conspiracy (hence face increased detection risks).

One of the peculiar aspects to this trade however, is that it should (according to many conservationists) not be happening at all. Consumers of tiger parts are often asserted to have a preference for wild tiger parts. This is employed as an argument as to why tiger farms will not work. People won't want captive-tiger parts because of the assumed superiority of wild. Clearly there are people in the black market who do not share this belief. Captive tiger is a good, practical substitute (in the illegal trade sense) to wild tigers.

The reality is that the preference for wild parts is probably a very weak preference. It's kind of similar to someone preferring a red car to a blue car. But if the blue car wins in other features (better price) then the preference for red disappears from the comparison.

One thing I've been working on recently is a paper on the black-market in China for tiger-products.

Figure: Polished Sumatran Tiger Canine


Essentially, if we don't understand how this market is organised and what drives the participants, reducing poaching will be much harder.

Here's a brief outline of the main points.

• 
  There is no single black market for tiger-products. The Chinese black-market is about two products- skins and bones. The market has geographical separation. Amur (Siberian) tigers are found in the North-East, Indo-Chinese and Bengalis in the South-East, and Bengalis in the West. So far these markets are not connected.
  
  Demand is medicinal. The chief source of demand for bone is medicinal. Demand has been suppressed by Chinese law enforcement but demand has not been stigmatized. The likelihood that education campaigns will reduce demand by enough does not look credible.
  
  And most importantly- people aren't smuggling tiger-penises into China. The payoff for such aphrodisiacs aren't economic. Nobody spends $US50k for a hard-on.
  
  There is no single smuggling mode. Tiger products have entered China via bus, train, truck, plane and boat. Smugglers have a large number of potential crossing points and modes of transport. Tiger parts are a also very low volume product. Together this means that interdiction rates are dismal, and the prospect for improvement weak.
  
  Real tiger products have different distribution channels. In the West, Tibetan connections have increased the penetration of tiger skins into Qinghai and Gansu. In other regions bone is traded secretly with few intermediaries. This is likely to reflect the harsh, punitive penalties involved if caught.
  
  It's not that profitable. A lot of conservation literature claims that tiger smuggling is extremely profitable. E.g. EIA says that if a tiger costs $1500 to poach and sells for $16,500 in China, the profit is 900%. Sure, if the poacher can teleport instantly, without negotiation costs, risks and transport costs the product to the customer. The reality is that wildlife is like every other illegal market. Most of the final price comes from transport costs, compensating participants for the risks and the like. Just like drugs, procurement costs are a trivial part of the price. It's the distribution network that takes the real commitment of resources.
  
  Poachers are hard to catch Expert hunters wandering around forests in Asia can evade capture for years. Some of the participants have been at it since the 1970s. The very environment that tigers live in hinders effective policing by (under-resourced and sometimes corrupt) local rangers. If it takes 10+ years to crack a smuggling ring, then the smugglers are in the driving seat.
  

What this basically means is that poaching isn't going to be stopped in most places by law enforcement. And we can't realistically stop the flow over the Chinese border. And if the distributions are small and secretive, then good luck to anyone trying to catch them.