The Business of Poaching

It’s brutal, secretive, and fully globalized.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


[Note: this text accompanies a photo essay by Patrick Brown in the July/August 2005 print issue of Mother Jones.]

PATRICK BROWN remembers when the magnitude of it all hit him, in a dark, flashbulb-illuminated room at Bangkok International Airport. Brown’s phone had rung at 3:30 a.m.; his contact at the Thai Royal Forestry Department was calling to announce a seizure of wildlife contraband. Brown, who for the past two years has been documenting the international trade in animals, had no idea what to expect—a package of tiger teeth on their way to China? Some rhino horns, popular as biological Viagra?

The catch turned out to be live pangolins—endangered mammals that look like a cross between a possum and a pinecone—482 of them, carefully stowed in shipping crates with dry ice to induce hibernation. “It was incredibly professional, very organized,” Brown recalls. “That’s when it really hit me that this is a major business, not just some guys out to make a few bucks.”

Ever since the economic boom of the ’90s, the trade in Asian wildlife has exploded, making animal smuggling a multinational industry worth, by some estimates, $30 billion a year; that’s more than the annual revenues of Coca-Cola (and more, also, than the international trade in humans). Much of the trade is in what Brown calls the “big, sexy animals”—tigers, rhinos, orangutans. But, humans being omnivorous both in what we eat and what we use as medicine, just about any creature can be worth money, especially if it’s rare. Though much of the market is centered in China, Europeans, Japanese, and Americans account for at least 60 percent of the total. Like any business worth its salt, the animal trade continues to expand into new niches: With pharmaceutical research overseas, for instance, the demand for monkeys in China and India has skyrocketed. All of which means that, at the rate we’re going, humans will probably have extinguished several of the most lucrative species—especially Asia’s majestic tigers—before decade’s end.

A wildlife seizure at Bangkok International Airport becomes a media feeding frenzy as Thai officials line up to get their photos taken alongside a very confused pangolin.

Though governments the world over pay lip service to curbing the wildlife trade, enforcement almost always takes a back- seat. In England, Scotland Yard has assigned only 4 of its 44,000 employees to wildlife smuggling; in Guwahati, India, vendors openly shave chips off a rhino horn; in Cambodia’s Bokor National Park, a nonprofit group teaches forestry officials how to catch poachers, such as this man, who was ambushed at his jungle camp.

Like any illegal business, the wildlife trade does best in the shadows—in border towns and war zones, among people desperate for a livelihood. In Nepal’s Royal Chitwan National Park, the army has cut back on elephant antipoaching patrols amid a guerrilla war; in the Thai/Burmese border towns of Moung

La and Tachilek, everything from buffalo heads to giant pythons (middle) to macaque skulls is on display for tourists, who pay as little as $10 for a tiger penis.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate