The global market for animal parts is burgeoning, and American wildlife is bearing the brunt. From Alaska’s Katmai National Park to the Appalachian trail, poachers are going after an array of endangered and imperiled species: grizzly bears, bald eagles, sea turtles, seals, timber wolves, waterfowl, even beetles. Other animals, such as black bear and alligator, have returned from the brink of extinction only to come under renewed attack. Asian medicine is only part of the problem. Big bears are prized by trophy hunters as well as gallbladder dealers. Bald-eagle feathers are a staple of trendy Southwestern art. The paddlefish market has been driven in part by a decline in caviar imports from Iran. But the effect of these trends is cumulative. Officials of the United States Fish and Wildlife (FWS) Service estimate that the trade in illegal animal parts has reached $200 million a year–up nearly 100 percent from a decade ago. Says FWS director John Turner: “Our wildlife is under siege.”
The new poachers range from overzealous sportsmen to professional criminals. FWS officials say that while a majority of the 16 million licensed hunters obey limits, a significant percentage do not. Recent roadblocks in Utah and Idaho yielded violation rates of 25 and 40 percent. And in 1988, a federal investigation caught 41 of 42 hunting clubs in Texas breaking waterfowl-hunting laws. Among the renegade licensed hunters are outfitters who charge large fees to help wealthy sportsmen bag illegal trophies. Their clients may pay tens of thousands of dollars for a chance to kill a bighorn sheep or a grizzly bear.
The more serious poachers are not sportsmen at all, says Stephen Frye, who runs back-country patrols in Yellowstone National Park. They’re sophisticated operators who use dogs and radio transmitters to track their prey, and who aren’t above shooting with assault weapons from planes or helicopters. Wildlife officials say many of these professionals work in networks tied directly into markets in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Japan. The carnage they leave behind would make a big-city cop wince. Wyoming game warden Kent Schmidlin recalls finding a pregnant moose and her 5-month-old fetus rotting in a patch of sagebrush. One Yellowstone ranger describes stumbling onto an elk carcass with its head severed by a chain saw.
The market for elk horn is a good example of the soaring trade in animal parts. In 1957, Boy Scouts in Jackson, Wyo., got special permission to gather dropped elk horns in the nearby National Elk Refuge. Nobody figured their harvest would make them one of the nation’s richest troops. This May, at their annual auction, the Scouts brought in nearly $70,000 for 6,000 pounds of antlers. Nearly 5,000 pounds were bought up by Los Angeles businessman Don Choi for export to the Orient. Choi estimates that 100 metric tons of dried antlers leave the United States for Asia every year. They’re ground into a powder and used to treat a variety of ills.
The Boy Scouts use their earnings mainly to buy winter feed for the elk. The problem, according to wildlife officials, is that the legal market for animal parts attracts an illegal one. Poached and gathered specimens all look the same at an auction, when gathered ones can be sold legally, poaching makes for easy profits. Within earshot of the Boy Scouts’ auctioneers, Wyoming Game and Fish Warden Doug Crawford patrols the square, where people from all over the West sell elk horn, moose racks, animal pelts and bear gallbladders from pickup trucks. “The public doesn’t realize that there are people who would kill a bear just for its gallbladder and paws,” he says.
Clamping down: The poaching problem won’t go away on its own; indeed, the dynamics of supply and demand could easily make matters worse. “As wildlife becomes rarer in this world,” notes John Varley, chief of research at Yellowstone," its value will increase in proportion to its scarcity." In hopes of stopping the spiral, some state legislatures now forbid the sale of animal parts while still permitting hunting. In Montana, for instance, there is a limited grizzly hunting season but gallbladder sales are illegal. California, Oregon and Washington have banned the sale of any bear parts. Other states are considering similar restrictions. But for those in the business of hunting, such controls seem hypocritical. Craig Boheler, who works for hunting outfitters in Wyoming, doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t be able to sell the gallbladder or claws of a legally taken bear. “If there’s anyone who’s against poaching, I am, " he says. “But as long as it’s legally harvested, I just can’t see leaving a couple hundred dollars to rot in the forest.”
Wildlife officials are getting more sophisticated about catching poachers (box); sting operations have netted hundreds of cases in recent years. Yet game wardens, like urban police, feel outmanned and outgunned. While poaching has dramatically worsened over the past 10 years, manpower has remained static: 200 FWS special agents, 7,000 state conservation officers and a few thousand federal natural-resource law-enforcement officers. Terry Grosz, head of FWS law enforcement for a region that encompasses about a third of the country, has just 22 agents. “I’d take Custer’s odds most days,” he says. Wildlife officials also complain of resistance from the judicial system. While some state and federal judges have begun to impose heavy fines and even prison terms on flagrant violators, most poachers continue to get off lightly.
Worldwide attention has focused on stemming illegal trade in African elephant ivory and rhino horn, and the outcry has succeeded in slowing the slaughter. The plight of America’s natural bounty, meanwhile, has been largely ignored. Yet as other wildlife habitats disappear, the United States is becoming the last reserve for dozens of species. That is precisely why America’s wilderness has become such a valuable asset for poachers–and why protecting it from them is so important.
