\"Populations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Mozambique, Nepal, South Africa and Zimbabwe are all suffering from poaching,\" says the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES.
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\"The situation is so critical in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that scientists fear the population may have been wiped out,\" CITES adds. \"Illegal trade in rhinoceros horn appears to be a cause of major concern. It includes fraudulent applications for CITES documents, abuse of legal trophy hunting and the use of couriers smuggling horns from southern Africa to Far East Asia.\"
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The northern white rhino subspecies had been restricted to Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the only remaining population was reduced by poaching from 30 in 2003 to only four confirmed animals by 2006.
Most African black rhinos are in just four countries: Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Kenya. Increases were posted in all countries with breeding populations except Zimbabwe, whose numbers are slightly down.";
WildlifeTrade_2008[i++] = new Array("","Turtles","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_turtle.hmedium.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "", "Noah Seelam", "AFP/Getty Images", "273", "364", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
WildlifeTrade_2008[i-1].body = "Marine turtles, tortoises
The illegal trade is strong in Southeast Asia and \"a major emerging threat comes from China and Vietnam,\" says Nicolas Pilcher, co-chair of the marine turtle specialist group within the IUCN conservation union. \"Major busts are being made with vessels carrying back hundreds and hundreds of turtles.\"
The demand comes from souvenir seekers and men who believe turtle parts can remedy impotency. \"Whole turtles are stuffed to hang on someone's wall, and male turtle penises are dried and ground and used as aphrodisiacs,\" Pilcher says. \"The shell of the hawksbill continues to be used to make jewelry, and the scale is massive, much greater than one can fathom.\"
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2007 saw incidents reflecting that scale, he says. In a two-week span, two trawlers were seized by Malaysia carrying nearly 300 green and hawksbill turtles. In May, \"a mysterious abandoned vessel was found floating off the coast of China and dubbed 'Noah's Ark' as it held some 5,000 rare animals, including endangered leatherback turtles. This find exposed one of the most lucrative and destructive wildlife smuggling routes, from the threatened jungles of Southeast Asia to the restaurant tables of southern China.\"
\"The story, if one tracks back long enough, is alarming,\" Pilcher adds.
Thailand is also a major hub for the trade in illegal freshwater turtles and tortoises. A 2008 survey of a Bangkok market found that 25 out of 27 freshwater turtles and tortoises species for sale were non-native, the vast majority of them illegally imported into the country.
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\"Dealers stated openly that many specimens were smuggled into and out of Thailand. They even offered potential buyers advice on how to smuggle reptiles through customs and onto airplanes,\" says Chris Shepherd of TRAFFIC, a wildlife monitoring network that undertook the survey.
Dealers were heard urging potential buyers to purchase the most endangered species because of their rarity value.
\"It is a sad day when people use a species' risk of extinction as a selling point,\" says Jane Smart, head of the species program at the IUCN conservation alliance.
Of the 786 freshwater turtles and tortoises seen on sale, more than a third, 285, belonged to species banned from international trade by treaty. Of these, 269 were radiated tortoises, a species native to Madagascar.";
WildlifeTrade_2008[i++] = new Array("","Elephants","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_elephants.hmedium.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "", "Karel Prinsloo", "AP", "273", "364", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
WildlifeTrade_2008[i-1].body = "Elephants
In Africa, two opposite trends are developing when it comes to elephants: those in protected reserves are thriving, but those outside are increasingly vulnerable.
\"Basically as elephant stocks dwindle and become concentrated into national parks and their peripheries we are seeing poaching move into the last refuges of forest elephants, since there are none left to shoot elsewhere,\" says Steve Blake of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
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Ivory drives the poaching, but elephant meat is also a factor. An example, Blake says, is the slaughter of elephants in Darfur, Sudan, by warring factions that eat the meat and sell the ivory to buy fuel, weapons and other supplies.
Demand for ivory, he adds, comes from \"China and other Asian nations, but also domestic unregulated markets (that) supply visitors from all over the world.\"
\"In Central Africa, elephants have declined dramatically,\" Blake says. \"This is all due to poaching, because habitat loss is lowest of any tropical forest region, at less than 0.2 percent.
![](\"http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_elephant_tusks.small.jpg\")
\"Roads for logging and other industry opens up previously inaccessible forest to poaching. Wildlife departments are weak, poor and corrupt therefore law enforcement is not happening except in a few small areas.\"
Poaching is also a major threat to elephants throughout South and Southeast Asia, says Simon Hedges, co-chair of the Asian elephant specialist group at the IUCN conservation alliance. Even though some males and all female Asian elephants lack tusks, they are still poached for meat and leather, with population declines over a wide area from Myanmar to Indonesia.
And where elephants are killed for ivory, long-term impacts are being seen. \"In Periyar Tiger Reserve in southern India, for example, ivory poaching has dramatically skewed adult sex ratios: over the 20-year period from 1969 to 1989 the adult male/female sex ratio changed from 1:6 to 1:122,” says Hedges.
\"The Indian Government has admitted that elephant poaching is increasing nationally,\" he adds.
The demand for ivory comes from China, Japan and Thailand. \"Thailand was by far the largest ivory market in Southeast Asia, supplied mainly by illegal imports of raw ivory from Africa and tusks from Myanmar,\" Hedges says, citing one study. \"In East Asia, China was shown to be the largest illegal manufacturer and importer–exporter of ivory, most of it from African elephants.\"
Another threat is villagers killing elephants in retaliation for crops being raided. \"Live elephants are also captured illegally for the circus trade, mainly calves that end up in China,\" Hedges says, \"and as transport animals,\" mainly in Myanmar.
Hedges notes that while the estimates for Asian elephants in the wild range from 30,000 to 50,000, those are \"no more than a crude guess\" that's been accepted \"despite major loss of Asian elephant habitat\" in recent decades.";
WildlifeTrade_2008[i++] = new Array("","Big cats","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_tigers.hmedium.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "", "Anthony Devlin", "AP", "273", "364", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
WildlifeTrade_2008[i-1].body = "Big cats
Tiger populations have declined by 95 percent over the past 100 years, and three sub-species have become extinct with a fourth not seen in the wild since the 1980s.
The body parts and skinds of most poached tigers end up in China and Southeast Asia where they are used in traditional medicine, prized as symbols of wealth and served as exotic food.
\"With only 4,000 tigers remaining in the wild, every tiger lost to poaching pushes this magnificent animal closer to extinction,\" says Sybille Klenzendorf of the World Wildlife Fund. \"Tigers cannot be saved in small forest fragments when faced with a threat like illegal wildlife trade.\"
About half of the remaining wild tigers are Bengal, living in South Asia.
An April 2008 survey found an alarming drop at a key Bengal refuge in Nepal: an estimated 6-14 tigers instead of the 20-50 estimated in 2005.
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The WWF notes that armed poachers were photographed by the very equipment set up to capture tiger images for the survey.
\"The loss of tigers in Suklaphanta is undoubtedly linked to the powerful global mafia that controls illegal wildlife trade,\" says the WWF's Jon Miceler. \"The evidence suggests that Nepal's endangered tigers are increasingly vulnerable to this despicable trade that has already emptied several Indian tiger reserves -- clearly, this is symptomatic of the larger tiger crisis in the region.”
The Suklaphanta reserve is on the border with India, allowing for easy smuggling. “Unlike poaching of other species like rhinos where only the horns are removed, virtually no evidence remains at a tiger poaching site because all its parts are in high demand for illegal wildlife trade,” the WWF says.
The Sumatran tiger of Indonesia, listed as critically endangered, also is nearing extinction in the wild. A 2006 investigation by the wildlife-monitoring agency TRAFFIC found teeth, claws, skin, whiskers and bones among the tiger parts for sale in 10 percent of 326 retail outlets surveyed in 28 towns across Sumatra.
The amount observed was actually less than during a survey five years earlier, but that's not really good news. \"Sadly, the decline in availability appears to be due to the dwindling number of tigers left in the wild,\" says Julia Ng of TRAFFIC, a wildlife monitoring agency.
\"Because of poor enforcement, the Sumatran tiger is slipping through our fingers,” adds TRAFFIC’s Leigh Henry. \"There are only about 400 Sumatran tigers left and such a small population can't sustain this level of poaching. If enforcement and political will are not bolstered the Sumatran tiger will be wiped out just as the Javan and Bali tigers were.\"
Sumatra's tigers are also under threat from rampant deforestation by the pulp and paper and palm oil industries.
Other big cat species facing poaching threats include the snow leopard in Afghanistan, where the influx of U.S. soldiers and other foreigners has created a demand for furs and other souvenirs.
Just 100 to 200 snow leopards are estimated to be left in Afghanistan. In comparison, Bhutan has the same number but has three times less habitat.
Worldwide, the wild population is estimated at between 3,500 and 7,000, according to the International Snow Leopard Trust.";
WildlifeTrade_2008[i++] = new Array("","Bears","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_bear.hmedium.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "", "Clemens Bilan", "AFP/Getty Images", "273", "364", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
WildlifeTrade_2008[i-1].body = "Bears
Six of the world’s eight species of bears are listed as threatened, and one common threat is the trade in body parts such as gall bladders, which can command high prices in black markets in places like China, Japan and Thailand. The six species are the giant panda of China, the Asiatic black bear, the sloth bear on the Indian subcontinent, the Andean bear in South America, the polar bear of Arctic areas, and the sun bear of Southeast Asia.
The sun bear, the world's smallest bear, was only added to that list in 2007 by experts with the IUCN conservation union, who cited poaching and deforestation in its habitat stretching from India to Indonesia.
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\"We estimate that sun bears have declined by at least 30 percent over the past 30 years and continue to decline at this rate,\" says Rob Steinmetz, a bear expert with the IUCN.
Some 10,000 sun bears are probably left, adds Dave Garshelis, co-chair of the IUCN bear specialist group.
Weighing between 90 and 130 pounds, the sun bear is hunted for its bitter, green bile, which has long been used by Chinese traditional medicine practitioners to treat eye, liver and other ailments. Bear paws are also consumed as a delicacy.
Another threat comes from loggers, who are destroying the sun bear's habitat. Thailand is the only country to have effectively banned logging and enforced laws against poaching, allowing the sun bear population to remain stable there, Garshelis says.
Ironically, experts are finding medical benefits from acid found in the gall bladders of some species such as polar and black bears. \"When produced in a non-invasive and ethically acceptable way, without pushing already threatened species further towards extinction, these substances are of great value to medicine,\" the IUCN states.
The acid is used \"to prevent the buildup of bile during pregnancy; dissolve certain kinds of gallstones; and prolong the life of patients with a specific kind of liver disease, known as primary biliary cirrhosis, giving them more time to find a liver transplant,\" the IUCN notes.";
WildlifeTrade_2008[i++] = new Array("","Sharks","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_sharks.hmedium.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "", "John Bazemore", "AP", "273", "420", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
WildlifeTrade_2008[i-1].body = "Sharks
At least 400 species of sharks exist, but some are now threatened. The scalloped hammerhead, white shark and thresher shark are among those whose numbers are estimated to have fallen by as much as 75 percent since 1995.
\"Sharks are mainly sought for fins and less commonly for their meat,\" says Sarah Fowler, co-chair of the IUCN shark specialist group. \"A few, particularly white sharks, are valued for their jaws and teeth.\"
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The big issue here is not illegal poaching, she adds, but the fact that these fisheries are largely unregulated.
\"Demand for meat is mainly from developed regions, particularly Europe,\" Fowler adds. \"Demand for fins is from Asia, which processes fins and then re-exports some of these processed products to the rest of the world.\"
Shark meat is increasingly used as a substitute for traditional fish catches in foods like fish and chips, while fins are used in Asia for shark fin soup.
Shark cartilage is also showing up in products claiming medical benefits.";
WildlifeTrade_2008[i++] = new Array("","Great apes","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_apes.hmedium.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "", "Helen Vesperini", "AFP/Getty Images", "273", "364", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
WildlifeTrade_2008[i-1].body = "Great apes
Two trends emerge when it comes to the illegal trade in great apes: an appetite in China for traditional medicines, and hunger in Africa for protein from apes and other wildlife, dubbed bushmeat.
There’s heavy bushmeat hunting in Central and West Africa, says Russ Mitermeier of Conservation International, and heavy poaching for meat and medicinal uses in Southeast Asia and China.
![](\"http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_apes_bushmeat.small.jpg\")
\"Much of this demand is internal within countries,\" he adds, \"although China is a market for products from all over Asia and increasingly the world.\"
In Africa, the trade is largely domestic as people seek food any way they can get it.
\"In Central Africa alone, about one million tons of wild meat is hunted every year,\" estimates Liz Bennett of the Wildlife Conservation Society. \"That is equivalent to 9 billion 1/4 pound hamburgers each year. It has been estimated that that includes some 28 million bay duikers; 16 million blue duikers; 7.5 million red colobus; 1.8 million red river hogs; 34,000 leopards; 15,000 chimps; and 6,250 lowland gorillas.\"
A 2008 report by the wildlife monitoring group TRAFFIC found that the lack of meat in refugee rations in Tanzania is causing a flourishing illegal trade in bushmeat, including chimpanzees.
Two dozen refugee camps are near wildlife areas, making it easy for poachers. The bushmeat is covertly traded and cooked after dark -- and referred to as 'night time spinach' inside many refugee camps.
\"Relief agencies are turning a blind eye to the real cause of the poaching and illegal trade: a lack of meat protein in refugees’ rations,\" says TRAFFIC’s George Jambiya.";
WildlifeTrade_2008[i++] = new Array("","Birds","","http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_parrots_grey.hmedium.jpg","","", "", "", "", "", "", "David Silverman", "Getty Images", "273", "364", "#000000", "", "", "", "");
WildlifeTrade_2008[i-1].body = "Birds
The parrot family has more globally threatened species than any other bird family, and the capture for pets is a primary cause of decline. The trade in wild birds is banned in the United States and, since 2007, in Europe, but the trade is legal in other areas.
Of particular concern is trade in African Grey parrots in West and Central Africa. \"The species may be threatened with extinction in its natural environment unless the trade is subject to strict enforcement,\" says Emmanuel de Merode, head of WildlifeDirect.
![](\"http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/z_Projects_in_progress/wildlife_trade_brill/wildlife_trade_parrots.small.jpg\")
In 2008, some 1,200 live or dying African Greys stuffed into cages were seized from traffickers in Cameroon. The parrots were being illegally flown to Bahrain and Mexico for the exotic pet trade.
Asia also is a hub for the sale of birds as pets, both to locals and foreigners. \"One bird market in Java (Indonesia) is estimated to sell between 1 and 1.5 million wild birds per year for the pet trade,\" says Liz Bennett, head of the wildlife trade program at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
At the Tangkoko Duasudara Nature Reserve in Sulawesi, Indonesia, the number of anoa and maleo birds declined by 90 percent between 1978 and 1993, she adds.
BirdLife International notes that bird species threatened due to the illegal trade include the:
*Yellow-crested Cockatoo Cacatua sulphurea of East Timor and Indonesia;
*Red Siskin Carduelis cucullata in northern South America;
*Java Sparrow Padda oryzivora of Indonesia.
The Spix's Macaw Cyanopsitta spixii of Brazil is already extinct in the wild due to the illegal trade and habitat loss."; WildlifeTrade_2008[i++] = new Array("","Video","Black market","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "msnbc.com", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); // END editorial data