April 19, 2013
The Sydney Morning Herald
LIVE RAID: the dark animal underbelly of wildlife trafficking
Bear paws, turtle soup and live monkey's brains, Jerrie
Demasi spent five days in Cambodia experiencing the murky world of the
illegal wildlife trade.
"Mum, you need to be more patient," says nine year old Cambodian Bo Pa.
Her adoptive mother sits across the table of a
red-and-gold-clad Chinese Restaurant in the heart of Phnom Penh, as they
wait for their Mekong lobster to arrive.
Then it hit me. I was sitting in between two stern-faced Government officials who spoke very little English. With my video camera in hand, it was hard to not feel the fear. I had little concept of what I was about to experience.
"Bo Pa," she responds sternly.
Click for more photos
Sunbear 'Sloat' gets her freedom
Sunbear cub Sloat (pictured) and her brother are rescued from poachers in Cambodia by Wildlife Alliance; keeper Nick Marx gives her some water
"If I was built to be patient, the whole rainforest would be gone by now."
At the time - my first night in Cambodia - I didn't realise how close
this big statement by this petite blonde American, Sowanna Gauntlett,
was to the truth.
Yet by the end of my five-day trip, I would know.
On the menu is "Turtle Chinese Herb Soup".
Sowanna pretends to be interested in the meal, so the waiter
enthusiastically reveals an Asiatic soft-shell turtle, around 70
centimetres in length, crammed in to a filthy crate not much larger than
its body with just a few inches of water in the bottom.
It is a threatened species; and although it's alive, it's not moving.
We take photos and leave the restaurant, passing a glass cabinet with several shark fins proudly on display.
By morning, the Wildlife Alliance team has visited the restaurant, fined the owner and seized the turtle.
It is sent to the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue centre to be
rehabilitated and eventually released, but whether it will be caught
again to appear as the main course on a restaurant menu, who knows.
Sowanna Gauntlett first visited Cambodia in the year 2000.
"Wildlife was being sold everywhere," she said.
"On sidewalks, in restaurants, in people's homes.
"Four-star generals kept tigers in cages in their living
rooms, there were bears behind most restaurants waiting for their paws
to be cut off after the next golf tournament as a delicacy, monkeys were
waiting on restaurant table tops to have their brains eaten alive.
"It was something absolutely shocking to me and I had to do something about it, because I could not stand it."
The daughter of a wealthy heiress to a US pharmaceutical
fortune, Ms Gauntlett tells of the piercing pain in the eyes of a snared
tigress that she rescued during her first conservation mission in
Cambodia.
Unable to shake the memory of its "cries for help", she
pleaded her mother to entitle her trust fund to the mission of putting
an end to the wildlife trade in Cambodia.
From there, the Wildlife Alliance was born.
Day two of my visit started in the early hours of the
morning. I climbed into a van with several heavily-armed Wildlife
Alliance guards, one of whom is ex-West Australian police detective Dean
Lague.
"We've definitely had an impact," he said.
"We've got a long way to go. It's moved underground to some
extent which causes us to have to do a lot more enquiry and
investigation work.
"But they people here are scared of us. They know we will catch them."
Since Ms Gauntlett began lobbying the Cambodian Government
more than a decade ago, the trade and capture of wildlife has been made
illegal, with penalties of up to ten years imprisonment.
This morning I was working undercover with the Wildlife
Alliance Rapid Rescue Team, sanctioned by the Cambodian government as an
official enforcement team, raiding the properties of known animal
traffickers along the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
Then it hit me.
I was sitting in between two stern-faced Government officials
who spoke very little English. With my video camera in hand, it was
hard to not feel the fear. I had little concept of what I was about to
experience.
We cross the Mekong River and pull up in a slum built up
around the main dirt road, villagers rush to watch the officials pile
out of their vehicles.
I follow the guards as they wander into one of the nicer looking homes in the street.
In the front room, a table of men play cards; around the side
of the property, the owner scurries to collect what looked like
emaciated puppies no larger than his hand and puts them into a small
rusty cage.
A government official beckons the man and he leads us through
an ominous dark corridor to the back of his house where a woman and
some young girls are.
The RRT begin to turn the home upside-down. Behind a large
pot hanging on the wall is a plastic bag, a guard rips it open and out
fall the rolled-up skins of three Burmese pythons, totalling nearly 10
metres in length.
A threatened species, they uncovered a significant find, although unfortunately not soon enough to save the reptiles lives.
Then, just as I zoom in on the trafficker's defeated
expression, the guards pull a taped-up cardboard box out from underneath
the kitchen table.
Tearing it open, they reveal 4 live Burmese pythons and crammed in so tightly that they are unable to move.
Dying of thirst, the snakes were rushed outside and drenched
with water before being transported to the Wildlife Alliance Pnom Tamao
Rescue Centre.
This trafficker arrested and fined $US700. If he cannot pay, he will most likely be sent to prison.
But this wasn't the man's first offence. He has been caught
before with 200 kilograms of wild animal meat and fined the equivalent
of around $US3,500.
With the average national wage sitting at $US1 a day, and
despite the hefty fines, people still take a calculated risk in this
lucrative trade.
Wildlife Alliance have arrested 2,100 offenders since 2001 and rescued 52,000 animals from the black market.
But this isn't where their conservation work ends.
They have also preserved 1.7 million acres of forest in
Cambodia's Southern Cardamoms from being destroyed by slash-and-burn
agriculture and have developed community projects to provide over 530
rural families with sustainable alternative incomes to illegal logging
and poaching.
The most significant day of my travels was to the Rehabilitation Station in the Southern Cardamoms tropical forest.
Here I met a sun bear called Sloat.
Gazing at me from a concrete cage she was curious, but wary.
Her eyes met mine briefly; little did she know she was about have her freedom.
Sloat and her brother Sop-heap were rescued from poachers as
cubs by Wildlife Alliance, rehabilitated, tagged and released back in to
the wild.
But it wasn't long before the pair was trapped by snares, a
barbaric hunting instrument made of razor sharp wires that close in
around a limb or neck of an animal.
Sloat almost lost her paw, but several surgeries were able to see it eventually healed.
Recognising the dangers of releasing the pair in to the wild
again, the Wildlife Alliance team sectioned off a protected one-hectare
plot in the forest for Sloat and Sop-heap to live until such a time that
the Cardamoms could be deemed safe.
Until then, this was to be the closest thing to freedom the bears will ever experience.
Sop-heap was already in the forest, and Sloat was about to join him.
In silence, and what felt like slow motion, I held my breath as the cage door slowly creaked open.
The sun bear stuck her little nose out of the door peering
out for a brief inspection, then without warning, bounded out in to the
greenery disappearing amongst the leaves.
The bears had safety and freedom for the first time.
Perhaps this was the feeling the keeps Sowanna Gauntlett fighting the endless battle.
Reporting these on-the-ground stories, it's sometimes
difficult to reserve my personal involvement, and this was no exception.
I was moved to tears visiting the sites of these projects.
The vision of the volunteers and conservation warriors
involved with Wildlife Alliance expels a selflessness that I have not
often experienced in the West.
Not one to ever ask for help, Ms Gauntlett built the charity from the ground up and achieved significant successes.
"You know sometimes courage is just thinking about the next step," she said.
"What can I do next, how can I stop these cages right here
right now on this sidewalk? So often I would just yell at the people,
take the cages, put it in my car and leave.
"Maybe I'm a task master but I drove [my staff] night and day
to do this, and I didn't stop until I thought that the job was under
control."
But now, Ms Gauntlett has no other choice but to appeal for support.
Her mother's trust fund will be exhausted by the end of 2013,
and if the Wildlife Alliance projects are to continue, the foundation
will need significant donations.
"I was fortunate enough to come into money because of my family," she said.
"But I have given it all, and I have nothing left.
"I've put the whole system in place to protect this rainforest and it needs to continue."
I found myself exhausting listening to her speak.
How a single person could come to a foreign country and
tackle a hopeless situation of waste and destruction by those who have
no concept of the value of the natural environment that surrounds them
is beyond my comprehension.
***
You can donate to Wildlife Alliance through the Australian based foundation For the Animals. All donations go directly to Wildlife Alliance projects in Cambodia.
Jerrie Demasi was sent to Cambodia courtesy of For the Animals.
No comments:
Post a Comment