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Title: Poaching, Ancient Traditions, and the Law.
Author: Michael Tennesen
Source: AUDUBON MAGAZINE, July-August 1991 v93 n4 p90(8).
Database: D Drive
POACHING, ANCIENT TRADITIONS, AND THE LAW
by Michael Tennesen
Chinatown drapes over the hills of the northeast corner of the San Francisco
Peninsula, where tall signs in Chinese lettering stack up in front of the
rows of shops along Grant Street. The street runs parallel to the shoreline.
Blue white capped waters of the San Francisco Bay are only viewed down side
streets as you traverse the intersections. There horns honk and traffic
stalls in narrow arteries filled with people moving purposefully and
chattering in strange tongues.
Up ahead, along the west side of the street in a tight row of shops is Yau
Hing Apothecary. I turn and enter though wooden door. Inside, the space is
narrow but high and deep. Neat rows of Chinese herbals line the walls in
large glass jars. The front of the shop is devoted to ginseng and other floral
remedies. But as you progress toward the rear, the displays along the walls
and inside the glass cases grow more animal: jars of dried sea horses, the
decomposed skeletons of shark's tails, and trays of antlers in velvet.
Next to the antlers are neat little tan paper bundles open only slightly to
reveal what appears to be some type of dried animal part inside. The lady
behind the counter is Asian, middle-aged, busy, anxious, and suspicious.
She responds to my questions about the shark's tails, but when I point to the
antlers in velvet and the small paper bundles, her answer is the same. "They
are for display purposes only."
On another day in the Berkeley offices of California State Department of
Health, Food and Drug Investigator Lily Dong, I watch a video taken in
February, 1988, when California State Fish and Game raided Yau Hing's shop.
Uniformed wardens search the same neat rows of glass jars where I had stood
one day earlier. The camera follows them as they ascend the stairs to the
not-so-neat boxes stacked on the floors above the shop.
Finally on the third floor hidden behind the boxes a warden begins to uncover
the damaging evidence: dried tiger penises, a rhino horn, powered rhino horn,
illegal abalone, and trays California black bear gall bladders.
The search and subsequent statewide arrests of 52 poachers and dealers in bear
parts capped a 2 year investigation that led State Fish and Game Authorities
from the black bear habitat of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to herbal dealers
in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Operation Ursus -- the scientific name for
bears -- was aimed at the breakup of a suspected $100 million a year animal
parts industry in California.
But as time has passed, the word has come down that bear galls are once again
for sale amongst the more than 110 herbal shops in China Town. Says Dong, a
5th generation American Chinese who participated in the undercover operation
that led to the Yau Hing bust, "In China Town, its common knowledge: you can
buy anything...if you've got the money."
The problem is that as ports like Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles have
become gateways to the Pacific Rim; more and more, Asians are immigrating to
our shores and bringing with them cultural traditions that don't always jell
with western wildlife management principles. The use of animal parts in
Chinese Medicine is a practice that goes back over 4000 years.
According to Dr. Jay Sordean, an Oriental doctor and acupuncturist practicing
in Berkeley, California; Oriental medicine favors natural over synthetic
substances and prefers empirical observation to laboratory study. Bear gall
bladders are thought to be helpful with gall stones, severe bruises,
abscesses, skin eruptions, and cataracts. Says Dr. Sordean, "The fact is,
gall bladders and gall stones have been used in medicinals all over the
world since antiquity."
Dr. Sordean is now working with the World Wildlife Fund seeking out alternate
substances to endangered species which might be acceptable to Oriental
doctors and herbalists. Though the practice of using bear gall bladders
may be repugnant to Westerners, in traditional Oriental medical practices,
it is valid medicine. If you were losing your vision, and you truly believed
it would help you, what would you do? Different viewpoints, separate visions.
Wildlife poaching and cultural conflicts abound in North America. American
Indians on the Pueblo and Hopi Reservations take eaglets from their nests and
sacrifice them in religious ceremonies. Court cases have defended their right
to do so. Indians claim it is an important part of their religion. "When the
Hopis emerged into the present world," says Leigh Jenkins, a Hopi and director
of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, "The eagle was there to guide them
and take the messages back to the guardian spirit. Today the eagle still
serves as the messenger."
Alaskan Eskimos take walruses along the frozen shores of Alaska. The Marine
Mammal Protection Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species (CITES) allow Alaskan subsistence hunters to take the walrus for
consumption or the creation and sale of articles of handicrafts and clothing.
Walrus hunting is at the heart of Eskimo culture. "There are some people who
say, `Well natives have plenty of money, they can go down to the supermarket,
therefore they don't need to shoot a walrus,'" says Bruce Batton, public
affairs officer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency in Alaska "but that's
just totally untrue."
It's the same in the Louisiana Bayous where amongst the Cajun communities
the hunter is the cultural hero. "In some of the public schools down their,"
says Dave Hall with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Slidell, Louisiana,
"you go in and ask the kids how many of your fathers and mothers depend on
the natural resources to make a living, and 100% of them will raise their
hand."
The problem arises when cultural traditions lead to poaching: taking game
over the limits, out of season, or without permits. Traditional takes of
eagles on the Hopi reservation have led to a reduction in their numbers and
to some Hopis going outside the reservation to hunt the raptor. Headless
walruses washed up on Alaskan shores have sent shock waves through the
Alaskan Communities. Overhunting have added to the decline in duck
populations in Louisiana. And the illegal take of black bear for its parts
is on the rise across the country. In the last several years undercover
operations in California, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, New Hampshire,
Maine, and Illinois have lead to the arrest of over 100 poachers and
dealers in bear parts.
Most of the poachers were caucasian; their motives greed. Bear galls may
retail for $400 to $600 in Chinatown, California or for $2,000 to $3,000 in
Seoul, Korea where many of the bear parts are headed. "It's very comparable
to the dope trade," says Ken Goddard, Director of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife's Forensic Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. "In fact in many cases it
is the same people."
Poachers can be put in jail, but as long as there is a lucrative market,
there will be other's along to cash in on it. Markets which grow out of
cultural traditions often seem entrenched.
According to Dr. Amalia Mesa-Bains, a Latino with the Department of
Integration for the San Francisco Unified School District. "It is real hard
to get people to let go of traditional ideas of health, spirituality and
sexuality."
***
On the Apache Mojave Indian Reservation, I sit with Robert Mesta, a raptor
biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a wirey 39 year old Yaqui
Indian. We are in the home of Norman Austin, an Apache medicine man. Norman
is soft spoken, 52, medium height, heavy built, and smooth skinned. He brings
out a carefully handcrafted wooden box, his medicine bag, and opens it to
show us the tools of his trade. They include several eagle feather fans, a
whistle made with the wing bone of an eagle, and eagle talons. "We use the
talons to pull the evil spirits out of the body," says Norman.
Caucasian Reservation Doctors in Arizona have learned to work with Indian
Medicine men rather than against them. Austin says his is just "a different
kind of medicine." He claims to be particularly effective for Apache kids
"who get into trouble with drugs and alcohol." He tells us about one
teen-age girl who had such problems, and the time he sat up with her all
night, and how she called him "dirty names" as he performed an exorcism with
the eagle feathers. "But she came out of it," he declares proudly.
Norman has a lot of respect for the eagle and tries to teach that respect to
other tribal members. He considers the Apache practice of wearing eagle
feathers in their hats and hanging feathers from their rear view mirrors to
be sacrilegious.
The U.S. Wildlife Agency maintains an eagle repository in Ashland Oregon
where eagle carcasses, collected by Wildlife agencies across the country,
are sent. The repository dispatches the eagles to Indians across the country
who use the feathers for ceremonies like Austin's. The trouble is, there are
not enough carcasses to meet the demand. Last year there were 800 requested
buy only 571 carcasses consigned. The result of the shortage is that some
poaching of eagles does occur.
The black market is lucrative. A good tail feather can go for $50, a good
wing feather can go for $100. It is not always the Indians who do the
poaching. One poacher, Ralph Jackson of Sequim, Washington was convicted of
killing 25 eagles. From ledgers taken in the raid, he had apparently made
$500,000 off these birds. After threatening a wildlife agent and his family
and cursing the judge, he was given 12 years in jail.
For the 9,500 members of the Hopi Tribe of Arizona, the collection of eaglets
from their nests is a sacred right they have practiced for over 1,000 years.
In a 1986 decision, the federal court upheld the right of Southwest Indians to
collect eaglets as part of their religious practices. As a result, the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service has entered into formal arrangements with a number
of tribes which allows the collections but limits the number of birds taken.
The Hopis were given 18 permits. The tribe had already experienced shortages
of eagles on the traditional collecting grounds. According to Mesta, most
eagles lay 2 or 3 eggs and only one survives -- the dominant one will push the
others out of the nest. "If the Hopi members were willing to leave one eaglet
in the nest," says Mesta, "this would provide for the continuation of the
species." But in Hopi tradition it is disrespectful to the spirit of the
eagle to leave one behind.
When the Hopis couldn't find the raptors on their own lands they went next
door. The 2,439 square mile Hopi Reservation is surrounded by the 25,000
square miles of the Navajo Nation. When the Hopis showed up to take their
birds, Navajo Wildlife conservation officers arrested them.
The Navajos have claimed that dwindling populations of eagles on both their
reservations were due to overhunting by the Hopis. But the Hopis say they
were there first, that they occupied the land that now comprises the two
reservations long before the federal government "arbitrarily" assigned
boundaries giving much of the territory to the Navajo. Leigh Jenkins, with
the Hopi Tribe, points too at the Navajo encroachment of sacred nesting
sights. "The population of the Navajos have exploded over the last century."
But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permit to collect eaglets had
stipulated that the Hopis could collect eaglets beyond their reservation--on
Navajo and public land with the permission of land managers. When the Hopis
came to Patrick Ryan, an anglo wildlife biologist working for the Navajo
Nation, for permission to collect eaglets on the Navajo Reservation, he
refused. "We felt that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not been
responsible in their actions. They were just issuing a permit to get the
monkey off their back," says Ryan. "We didn't have a good inventory out
there, how many nests there were, how many young are hatched each year, and
how many of those hatched survive. We told them we needed more information
before we could responsibly issue such a permit."
Now, however, the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, and the Arizona Game and Fish Department have come together for a
joint cooperative venture to study eagle populations on the reservations.
Some of the efforts have been oriented toward getting the Hopis to consider
captive breeding of eagles and to leave behind one of each brood of eaglets
to insure the perpetuation of the population. According to Jenkins, some of
the collecting parties have left eaglets behind. "The future is looking
good," says Navajo Wildlife Biologist Patrick Ryan, "at least now we are
talking."
***
On July 27, 1988, U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel in Alaska observed Joseph
Clark, 63, and his two sons, Sam Clark, 26, and Richard Clark, 38, come
ashore at Togiak National Wildlife Refuge in Southwest Alaska and kill 9
walrus with rifles. Several carcasses were left at the scene with little or
no meat removed and six headless carcasses were towed out to sea and lost.
The three were charged under the Marine Mammal Protection act with taking
walrus in a "wasteful" manner.
All three were later convicted, making a total of only 5 such convictions in
Alaska since the Marine Mammal Protection Act went into affect in 1972. Under
that law, native Alaskans can take walrus but they must utilize all parts of
the animal. Headhunting for ivory only has recently become an issue. In the
summer of '89 a survey along the Northwest coast found 200 carcasses. And
lately a number of animals have been washing up on Alaska beaches without
tusks or heads.
Newsweek Magazine published an article in June, 1989 that alleged that young
Eskimos "typically" ambush walruses on the ice floes "then severe their heads
with chain saws." The Alaskan walrus hunting community was up in arms.
According to Mathew Iya, director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission, the
incidents of Eskimo headhunting is "very very minute. It is extremely hard to
look at what caused a walrus to die, whether from wounds or natural causes.
And it is legal to take ivory from a walrus that is already dead."
Scott Schliebe a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife in Alaska equates
headhunting and the Eskimo Culture to auto theft and the white culture. "It
doesn't mean these actions are condoned by the hunters. They recognize the
threat they pose to their hunting privileges."
Eskimos are cooperating with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to mark legal
ivory with ultraviolet stamps and in collecting data for wildlife biologists
on animals taken. Part of the problem is getting the message out to all
eskimos about the consequences of "wasteful hunting."
As a part of an innovative plea bargain, Joseph Clark, one of the convicted
Eskimo hunters, went on a video distributed to coastal Alaskan communities of
native hunters, where in in both English and his native Yup'ik, Clark urged
hunters to act together to protect their hunting privileges. "Anyone who
wastes a walrus hurts not just the walrus, but all walrus hunters."
***
The video is also an important tool of Law enforcement in the Louisiana
Bayou. There U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent Dave Hall is said
to be one of the few Louisiana agents who may bust a poacher and then turn
around and offer him a movie deal. He lugs tapes of freshly accused and soon
to be punished poachers around to schools and community events to try and
educate the public about the consequences of poaching in the Bayou.
Whereas Alaska's poaching problems are with marine mammals, Louisiana's are
with waterfowl. Louisiana is a melting pot of ethnic populations, chief
amongst which are the Cajuns. Having originally migrated from France to
Canada, they were kicked out of Canada when they wouldn't swear allegiance
to the King of England and settled in the Louisiana marshland.
For centuries Cajuns have grown and caught what they ate while becoming
famous for their food and music. It was not too long ago that bayou waterfowl
blackened the sky, and wildlife conservation seemed somehow inappropriate.
Lonnie Lege, 52, a Cajun, and manager of the Paul J. Rainey Wildlife
Sanctuary, remembers when he was a 14 year old boy in a family of 8, and one
of his responsibilities was putting meat on the table, and meat then mean
waterfowl. "The whole community kept watch for the game wardens, though there
weren't that many then."
The best hunters commanded a position of respect in those days and for a time
Lonnie was known as the village hunter. "We didn't look at the game laws as
serious violations then." But now things are different, the skis are not so
black with waterfowl, and wildlife officials have gotten tough with violators.
Poachers can now expect to have their guns, boats and even their cars
confiscated. And stiff fines and jail sentences have upped the anti. "It
curbed the heck out of poaching," says Lege who now works the other side of
the law, "It just wasn't worth going to jail for." Hall feels these stiff new
penalties are working cross culturally. "We are seeing a complete change in
attitude," says Hall. "People don't wink their eyes at poachers any more.
It's not just a Cajun issue. You can't go to the New Orleans country club
either and brag how many ducks you just shot illegally. They won't slap you
on the back anymore and say, `Hey, you did good.'"
***
On Playa El Farito, a 5 kilometer stretch of beach in Michoacan, Mexico,
both Mexican and American biologists and members of the Sea Turtle Center
from Nevada City, California guard both the Pacific ridley and leatherback
sea turtles that come here to lay their eggs. All seven species of sea
turtles are currently endangered or threatened, yet poachers still take sea
turtle eggs and sell them on the black market as aphrodisiacs.
Biologists are currently trying to go back into the villages and educate the
people, especially the young, to the plight of these glorious marine animals.
But the task, changing cultural norms, is once again excruciatingly slow and
difficult.
The promise of a better sex life has spelled death for many of the world's
animals. Seal penises are brewed in teas in Latino communities while tiger
penises are similarly taken in Oriental communities for their effects on the
libido. Aphrodisiac qualities are allegedly found in many animal parts, and
in fact the quest for the fountain of sexual youth has been a evil influence
in animal parts traffic. According Dr. Bill Rainey a biologist with the
University of California at Berkeley, "Our wildlife just can't support the
ebbing virility of an ever expanding population."
***
At the Los Angeles International Airport in a Northwest Airlines bonded
cargo warehouse, Los Angeles Supervisory Wildlife Inspector Mike Osborn, an
energetic young native Californian, goes through boxes of live snakes,
lizards and turtles and compares their species to shipping lists. There are
9 crates today, which Osborn claims is "small stuff," compared to the 30 or
40 crates he often is faced with on the weekends.
Los Angeles is one of 9 ports in the United States where live animals enter
the country. And L.A. and Florida, with their temperate climates, account
for more live animals than any other U.S. port. The United States is the
world's largest consumer of wildlife followed by Japan and Western Europe.
Yet Osborn is one of only 5 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Inspectors in Southern
California and one of only 65 inspectors across the country. According to
Osborn, U.S. Fish and Wildlife must rely on U.S. Customs inspectors to do
much of their work, though he admits wildlife often takes a back seat to
intercepting drugs with Customs.
But things are improving. Customs officials now receive training in
recognizing wildlife products and work more closely with wildlife officials.
Still the job is enormous. Osborn's office is also in charge of the Los
Angeles/Long Beach Harbors which recently surpassed New York/New Jersey
to become the busiest harbor complex in the nation with close to 3 million
containers moving through there annually. It takes an inspector a half day
to inspect only one container.
Later, inside the Seizure Room at the Los Angeles U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Office, we get a glimpse of the spectrum of illegal traffic Fish and Wildlife
inspectors must deal with. Around the room is a cornucopia of wildlife
products including a stuffed lion, a guitar made of a sea turtle shell, walrus
tusks, crocodile purses, an elephant foot stool, as well as a number of lizard
and snake skin products. According to Ozborn, being a part of Western fashion
can be as deadly a curse to a wildlife species as having alleged aphrodisiac
qualities. In some parts of the U.S. having a good pair of cowboy boots is as
important as having a good sex drive. And traders can be ruthless in feeding
the market. "If one particular species is being used heavily in the trade,
when that species becomes endangered or even extinct," says Ozborn, "you are
going to see the trade move to the next closest species and start working on
it. If allowed to continue, it can work right through a whole genre."
Then in the corner of the room, Ozborn opens a box which contains one of the
most difficult challenges he faces, inside are small boxes of Niuhaang
Chiangyawan, an Oriental Medicinal. Inside the boxes are pills which contain
a number of animal products including 3.69% rhino horn. At least these pills
are marked.
When Califonia Fish and Game Wardens entered the Yau Hing apothecary shop in
San Francisco, many of the herbs were labeled only in Chinese and in many
cases the labels were street dialects, from different regions of China. Lily
Dong who spoke 4 Chinese dialects was unable to translate all the labels.
One tool now available to U.S. Fish and Wildlife authorities for identifying
wildlife products is the new Forensic Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon.
According to its director Ken Goddard, the Laboratory owes its existence to
the National Audubon Society who sued the Fish and Wildlife Service for not
going after the big smugglers. "We couldn't identify 80% of our evidence.
And we were afraid some smart young lawyer would stand up in court and ask
us to prove what we had."
Though it's sometimes easy to identify stuffed animals or animal skins, when
they are reduced to animal parts or to the powder in a pill, the going gets
tougher. At the Forensics Laboratory, scientists use scanning electron
microscopes, and such exotic tools as Mass Spectrometers and Liquid
Chromatographs -- some of the tools NASA sent to Mars looking for life
on the Red Planet.
Even with these tools, forensic scientists have their work cut out for them.
Was this walrus bone taken in a legal or illegal hunt? Is this an elephant
bone or a mastodon fossil? And was this animal taken prior to the passage
of the Endangered Species act in 1973? These are some of the difficult
questions they have to answer.
One of the most promising new techniques being looked at by the lab is DNA
finger printing. Says Goddard, "With these techniques you can match the blood
on the hunters outfit with the blood of the animal."
One thing forensic scientists are finding is that a good percentage of black
market products are fake. Rhino horns turn out to be cow horns, and bear
galls to be pig galls. In California it is illegal to offer bear parts for
sale whether real or phony. But in a number of cases in Operation Ursus,
which arrested 52 poachers in 1988, when it was brought up in trail that
dealer goods were phony, "Even though they had been charged with a
felony/misdemeanor -- it could go either way -- they still stuck to their
guns that it was true bear," says arresting officer Miles Young with
California Fish and Game. Dealers were apparently more concerned with their
black market reputation than they were with the possibility of stiffer
penalties.
***
In Menlo Park, California we sit at a table of the entire undercover
operations of California Fish and Game for the 13 counties that surround the
San Francisco Bay Region. Around that table are Patrol Lieutenant Miles
Young, Warden Karen Longmore and Food and Drug Investigator Lily Dong -- on
loan to Lt. Young from the California State Department of Health. Lt. Young
admits that there is no way 2 people and a loaner can handle all the fish and
game violations in a 13 county region. His efforts instead have been directed
toward a few long term operations like Operation Ursus.
Young formerly worked as an undercover narcotics officer for the City of San
Francisco but became interested in joining Fish and Games one day on a pier
in San Francisco Bay when he witnessed 28 fishermen pick up a game warden and
attempt to throw him in the water. Young and his partner went to the warden's
rescue.
That incident typifies the limited resources available to wildlife agencies
trying to a handle poaching and traffic of endangered and threatened species.
"How can we have more people, more money, and more game?" says Young. "It's
just not possible given our current resources."
Some wildlife officials feel that even if there were sufficient enforcement
resources, enforcement alone can only hold the tide against poaching. What
is needed is a change in attitude if the plunder is to be stopped. Says Dr.
Bill Rainey, "In many cases the scale of fines are such that it makes sense
to pay the fine and keep right on with the activity."
But stiffer fines and stiffer sentences are now becoming de rigueur in many
states. Dave Hall with Fish and Wildlife in Louisiana feels that one
effective method of curtailing illegal hunting activity is to suspend the
poachers hunting license. Says Hall, "Some guys -- I've got them on camera --
say,`That's like a death sentence to me.'" Hall finds a little jail and a
little counseling can often convert a poacher to return to his community and
sing a different tune. "Until there is pier pressure inside these communities,
the laws themselves can't change attitudes."
***
In an isolated region of the Northern Sierra Nevada Mountains, a black bear
is found, it's paws cut off, it's stomach split open, its gall bladder
removed, and the carcass left to rot. In California, despite dozens of
statewide crackdowns on poachers and herbal dealers, the wildlife
black-market flourishes. Wildlife officials estimate that as many black
bear are poached annually (about 1,500) as are taken legally.
And the problem is spreading, even to Canada. In August of 1989 Wildlife
authorities intercepted a shipment of 27 gall bladders, 36 bear paws and 5
sets of bear sexual organs inbound from Canada to L.A. bear parts dealer.
Wildlife officials feel much of this traffic is bound for Asian export, and
exports are watched less closely than imports. Right now all 4 species of
Asian bear are endangered, leaving North America with the only viable
population of bears in the world. But that could change.
Last year Japan tried to get the North American Black Bear put on appendix 2
of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CIDES) which
would limit its trade. Japan didn't get the listing since they could not show
that North America's black bear populations were really in trouble. Japan's
motivation was to stop Asian bear parts now being laundered through their
country as legally hunted North American black bear parts. "Laundering is one
of the most serious problems we face," says Ginette Hemley, director of
Traffic U.S.A. which monitors the international wildlife trade.
Wildlife officials were somewhat surprised to see Japan, an infamous abuser
of wildlife laws, come to the aid of the North American black bear. But
according to Hemley, "Japan, much to the surprise of many, is becoming more
responsible. They have slowly come around to becoming a player...although
painfully slow."
Still, not all Asian countries are a party to CIDES. Taiwan, which is not
recognized by much of the world cannot sign, and Korea thus far has refused
to sign. At the recent CIDES Convention, Dr. Bill Rainey heard an unconfirmed
report that Koreans were now offering trips to wealthy Japanese to come to
Korea and consume bear parts.
Though American Black Bear Populations remain healthy on the whole,
biologists worry what effects poaching could have on isolated populations of
both black bear and grizzly. Dean Tresch special agent for the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service in Spokane, Washington does a lot of work protecting the
Selkirk grizzly bear population one of the last remaining ecosystems for the
grizzly in the lower 48 states where grizzlies have been poached both for
trophies and bear parts. "If poaching continues on sensitive species like
Selkirk's grizzly bears," says Tresch, "we are looking at extinction in a
very short time."
The current condition of African rhino is an example of the devastating
effects that illegal wildlife traffic can have on any species. Rhino horn is
used for ornamental daggers in Yemen and in Oriental pharmaceuticals. Thirteen
years ago there were 65,000 black rhinos roaming Africa. Today poachers have
reduced that number down to a paltry 3,500. This year, in a desperate effort
to save its few remaining black rhinos, the Southwest African Nation of
Namibia is cutting off the horns of animals in the wild to try and destroy
the poacher's incentive to take the rhino.
Enforcement is presently the major tool of wildlifers in North America, but
where poaching is motivated by cultural differences, education is perhaps the
best long term solution. Currently the Audubon Society is trying to bring
conservation to U.S. schools through its Audubon Adventures Program aimed at
grades 3 to 6. There are now some 10,000 teachers and 300,000 school children
enrolled. Teachers receive guides, posters, and other material to help
introduce kids to basic concepts of nature, while local Audubon Chapters are
encouraged to take classes on Audubon trips into the wild.
Taking the message to the inner cities where conservation is still a whisper
is a major challenge. San Francisco's Unified School District has a program,
Outdoor Esperiences, which takes inner city kids camping. The results are
startling. Says Dr. Amalia Mesa-Bains, "For many of them, to be in the
outdoors where you don't plug it in and watch it is a real first time
experience."
But even here there is a cultural gap for whereas 85% of San Francisco's
teachers are white, 85% of the students are of color -- principally Asian,
Latino and Black -- and 65% of those students don't speak English at home.
It is a trend in California and across the country where people of color will
be the majorities in many urban areas by the early 21st Century.
The gap also exists with conservation groups including the Audubon Society.
Whereas the general population is increasingly becoming young, dark, and poor;
"we are essentially old, white, and rich," says Daniel Taylor, western
regional representative for the National Audubon Society. "We have to realize
political power is shifting. And if we are not sensitive and develop
constituents in these growing and increasingly powerful segments, we're not
going to be able to maintain the momentum that we have."
***
On a hillside dusted with desert scrub, overlooking San Carlos Lake on the
San Carlos Apache reservation, a crowd gathers around the shrouded figure of
a 3 1/2 year old desert bald eagle. The eagle, recovered by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service from the Arizona hills north of Phoenix with a broken right
wing, was nursed back to health in the Phoenix Zoo. When the San Carlos
Apache Tribal Council requested that the bird be let loose on their
reservation, Fish and Wildlife agreed.
On the day of the bird's release, members of the Tribal Council, and
representatives of the San Carlos Game and Fish Department, the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, and the Phoenix Zoo, as well as reporters from 3 local
television stations and 4 local newspapers gather to witness the event.
Tribal Chairman Buck Kitcheyan and Vice Chairman Ronald Edwards along with
biologist Robert Mesta participate in the actual release of the bird.
Preceding the event there is a ceremony by an Apache medicine man to bless
those who would handle the eagle. To the Apache, the eagle represents
spiritual guidance and strength.
Mesta and Tribal Chairman Kitcheyan hold the eagle while Vice Chairman Edwards
pulls off the hood. Then they let it go. The eagle soars upward as all eyes,
camera lens, and spirits follow. The bird flies off the bluff and after a
short cruise lands in a small mesquite tree on the lake shore. For a moment a
communal smile washs over racial and cultural differences. For the moment,
cultural visions are not so separate.
In the end only understanding can bridge the gap between wildlife poaching
and cultural conflicts. "The first step is we have to stop thinking we are are
better, they are different," says Dr. Bains. "We have to negotiate."
-- The End --