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Каспинфо август 2003 |
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Название: ПРОБЛЕМЫ СОХРАНЕНИЯ ОСЕТРОВЫХ (на англ. яз.) Главные Пункты: * Согласно данным астраханской милиции в этом году наблюдается рост браконьерства на 20%. В этом году у браконьеров уже изъято 1, 3 тонны икры. (22.08.2003) Полный Текст ПРОБЛЕМЫ СОХРАНЕНИЯ ОСЕТРОВЫХ (на англ. яз.) ПРОБЛЕМЫ СОХРАНЕНИЯ ОСЕТРОВЫХ (на англ. яз.) *** Illegal Sale of Endangered Wildlife Booms Inter Press Service, July 31, 2003 By Sergei Blagov Russian wildlife is under siege. The change is obvious at Ptichy Rynok, as Moscow's bird market is called. By the late 1990s trade at this market was out of control. The few newly rich Russians thronged the market in search of exotic pets. Endangered animals like lemurs, rare birds and even Caiman crocodiles were sold next to cats, guinea pigs and fish. The market in downtown Moscow was shut down in December 2001 to curb the illegal sales of endangered animals. It reopened at another location last year with tighter controls and daily inspections. But the trade in illegal animals continues, if not all of it at Pitchy Rynok.=20 "There are now Internet shops," Alexander Shestakov from WWF Russia told IPS. "You are getting customers placing orders online for rare parrots and other species." Tighter controls at Pitchy Rynok are not always a disincentive either. Fines range from $ 10 to $ 80, hardly enough to put some traders off, given the scale of the business. Recent customs seizures indicate a busy trade. Tranquilized parrots and rare falcons were seized from outbound suitcases at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport. Two Russians were caught at Ussuriisk in the Russian far east trying to smuggle 18 bears to China. Customs officials seized 30 falcons, dozens of parrots and more than 3,000 spiders last year. They believe these successes represent only a tiny part of the trade. The WWF says there is considerable smuggling of birds of prey out of Russia. These birds are sold mainly in Arab countries, and a single bird can fetch thousands of dollars. It is illegal to sell animals listed in the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). And trade in live animals is not necessarily the worst of it; the greater danger to wildlife could come from smuggling of animal parts. Shestakov says the trade in live animals runs into millions of dollars a year, but trade in animal parts could be worth more. "Russia is a major exporter of a variety of animal parts, such as tiger skins and bones, and bear gallbladders," Shestakov says. Tiger parts and bear gallbladders are sought after in many East Asian countries for their perceived medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities. The Siberian tiger has as a result been pushed towards extinction. Barely 100 are left. Most Siberian tigers and bears are killed for export of their body parts to China. A Chinese national was detained in April for trying to smuggle 26 frozen bear paws out of Russia. Contraband trepangs, also known as sea slugs, are also hot items for sale in Korea, China and Japan. The Russian Pacific Border Guard command announced last week that it had bust a huge smugglers' ring and seized about 33,000 dried trepangs. Authorities have seized more than 100,000 processed trepangs this year, and detained 60 poachers. Sturgeons, the fish sought for caviar, the eggs in its ovaries are prize items for smuggling to the United States and Europe despite international agreements that forbid such trade. One of Russia's most pressing environmental problems is the Caspian sturgeon population, representing some two-thirds of the world's reserves. The official sturgeon and caviar catch is plummeting, while rampant poaching is believed to net five to 10 times the official catch. In the first half of this year, 20 percent more cases of poaching were registered than over the corresponding period last year, says Gen. Vladimir Khvatkov, police chief of Astrakhan, Russia's main Caspian port. The police seized 1.3 tonnes of caviar, some 20 tonnes of sturgeon, and 45 tonnes of other protected fish species from poachers, Khvatkov said. Sturgeons were protected in tsarist Russian. When the fish were spawning, silence was observed along the Volga river. Now the sturgeon population is hard pressed. Tapping of offshore oil and gas reserves also threatens the Caspian sturgeon. An Interpol report says wildlife trafficking is now the second largest form of international smuggling after drugs. The international smuggling in wildlife is worth an estimated $ 6 billion dollars a year. |