By Lisa Biehle Files
In case you haven’t heard yet, we are in the middle of the largest mass extinction since the days of the T-Rex. This dramatic reduction in plant and animal species causes the black market value of endangered wildlife and their products to skyrocket.
According to author Laurel A. Neme, polar bear rugs, tarantula paperweights, sea-turtle-shell lamps, crocodile face ashtrays, cobra-skin cowboy boots, and bear paws, are some of the items collected by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Forensics Lab.
The Nature Book Club will discuss Neme’s book, “Animal Investigators: How the World’s First Wildlife Forensics Lab is Solving Crimes and Saving Endangered Species,” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7, at Trailside Museum of Natural History, 738 Thatcher Ave., in River Forest.
“Animal Investigators” is structured around three of the Wildlife Forensics Lab’s most critical cases. In their lab, criminalists, morphologists, chemists, geneticists, pathologists, and digital analysts, work together to implement the Endangered Species Act as well as parts of the Marine Mammal Protection Act by tackling about 600 cases each year.
Walrus Tusks
In late 1989, hundreds of headless walrus washed ashore on the coastline of Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, the westernmost part of the North American mainland.
Neme takes us along on the investigation to solve this mystery. Was it the result of subsistence hunting by Native Alaskans who traditionally used the meat, hides, blubber, bones, and ivory tusks without leaving so much waste behind? Was it the consequence of poaching for ivory tusks alone? Or could Russian villagers on the opposite side of the Bering Strait have been responsible?
Complete walrus skulls with tusks fetch thousands of dollars on the black market, and ivory tusks alone garner hundreds so that artists can create one-of-a-kind carvings.
Some of the Seward Peninsula carcasses were also missing the baculum bone (or oosik), the longest in any living mammal, and therefore a valuable commodity on the black market.
Forensics Lab Director Ken Goddard, chief scientist Ed Espinoza, and chief veterinary medical examiner Dick Stroud go in the field, searching for bullets and clues. In the process, they learn about a shift in Native Alaskan culture from subsistence to a cash economy, creating new financial pressures.
Bear Gallbladders
Chinese traditional doctors have prescribed the bile from bear gallbladders as an effective anti-inflammatory for 3,000 years. Recently, Western pharmaceutical companies chemically synthesized the active ingredient, ursodeoxycholic acid (UDC), to treat gall-stones, cancers, liver cirrhosis, and other diseases.
Nevertheless, the market for bear bile remains active, with bear gallbladders valued at anywhere from $150 to $5,000 each. Writes Neme: “Ounce for ounce, bear bile is one of the highest-value commodities on the black market.”
Asiatic black bears have declined in numbers because of the market for bear bile, but North American black bears are similar and happen to carry bile with higher levels of UDC (39% versus 8%).
Neme details two cases, one in Canada and one in Colorado, involving the sale of large numbers of bear gallbladders. Some dealers try to pass off pig gallbladders (worth $2 each) as bear because of similarities, but the Wildlife Forensics Lab has perfected two techniques to prove the animal source and thus help solve many cases.
Most of traditional Chinese medicines are made from plants and minerals, but a small number are made from animals, many of which are now threatened or endangered.
Macaw Feathers
In 1997, a routine inspection of a package by a Customs official at Dulles International Airport revealed an elaborate feathered crown, a necklace made from teeth, earrings, a cheek piece, belts, headdresses, arm ornaments, and more. They were Amazonian artifacts worth $3,000.
The shipment had been addressed to a man in South Euclid, Ohio, but it contained feathers from many protected species, namely scarlet macaw, hyacinth macaw, blue and yellow macaw, red-billed toucan, green-winged macaw, yellow-crowned Amazon, orange-winged Amazon, and common rhea, which meant the shipment was blatantly illegal.
Author Neme takes us on another investigation with Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent Daniel LeClair as he follows the trail to the dealer in Florida. LeClair’s instinct that this shipment is just the tip of an iceberg is correct. He poses as an art collector for three years, acquiring all the evidence needed to sting an international smuggling trade in Amazonian artifacts.
Neme writes: “The huge volume of illegal trade represents thousands of Amazonian animals. With a single artifact containing feathers from as many as five bird species, every thousand artifacts could represent as many as five thousand different birds that were killed. Each of those birds plays a critical role in the ecosystem and their removal affects the plants and animals that depend on them. However, we don’t yet know exactly how the reduction or removal of certain kinds of birds, which represent over 80 percent of Brazil’s wildlife trafficking, will impact the Amazon rain forest. The likelihood, however, is that when they are no longer around to serve as seed dispersers, seed predators, and pest controllers, the ecosystem will be affected at every level.”
Neme thoroughly highlights the heroics of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and their national and international impact, but the penalties in the end seem too light for those who are convicted. Clearly, crimes against wildlife are not considered as egregious as crimes against people.
In each case, the desire to protect endangered species collides against economic necessity, financial greed, and cultural traditions, creating a complex story of right and wrong.