#illegal trade

[jadeseadragon]

Isabella Kirkland (American, b. 1954), Trade, 2001, oil paint and alkyd on canvas over panel, 36 × 48 inches.

"Wild populations of the species in this painting are depleted by collection for both legal and illegal markets."

[rjzimmerman]

The ‘timber detectives’ on the front lines of illegal wood trade

Germany’s Center of Competence on the Origin of Timber tracks down which EU wood imports come from illegal sources in the world’s third-biggest criminal sector.

Excerpt from this story from National Geographic:

Under tungsten light on a bleak winter day, Gerald Koch gazes up from a black microscope, adjusts his rimless glasses, and gestures at a monitor displaying a slice, thinner than a hair, of suspected illegal timber.

“I only need to look at these two to know immediately it comes from South America,” he says, pointing at a pair of large white cells on a canvas of charcoal gray. “This is down to our years of experience.”

The quiet corridors of the Thünen Institute, a cluster of dreary, 1960s-era concrete buildings in a leafy suburb of Hamburg in northern Germany, might not tally with the image of a world-leading hub fighting international crime. But housed in a second-floor laboratory overlooking the institute’s 22-acre grounds, which are filled with 1,500 tree species, is the foremost center for timber authentication in the world.

“A lot of the timber being illegally logged is difficult to trace and often customs declarations are wrong,” says Koch, who leads the institute’s Center of Competence on the Origin of Timber. “It’s our job to uncover the truth.”

The illegal timber industry, worth $152 billion a year, is the world’s third largest criminal sector after drugs and counterfeit goods, according to Interpol. As the global wood trade has boomed—the value of forest product exports more than quadrupled between 1980 and 2020—so too has the awareness of its illegal component. The WWF estimates that 16 to 19 percent of the European Union’s wood imports come from illegal sources.

Every day a team of 15, including four forensic scientists, inspects a curious array of wooden objects—from children’s toys to window frames, coat hangers, and umbrella handles—to determine where they were made and whether they were made of endangered or protected trees. The team alerts German authorities if any sample is found to be in breach of the European Timber Regulation, which since 2013 has banned illegal timber imports, or the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a multilateral treaty to protect plants and wildlife.

[bpod-bpod]

Under Threat

With the origins of the coronavirus pandemic linked to wildlife markets, the wildlife trade is coming under renewed scrutiny, especially focused on the world’s most trafficked animals, pangolins. All eight species, from Africa and Asia, are threatened by illegal poaching and trade, particularly for their scales, used in traditional medicine. While the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is thought to have originated in bats, limited human contact with bats suggests that, like SARS and MERS before it, SARS-CoV-2 had an intermediate host, with pangolins as prime suspects. Researchers sampling viruses from three Malay pangolins (pictured) confirmed they are natural hosts for betacoronaviruses, the group including SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2. They reconstructed a pangolin virus sequence 90% identical to SARS-CoV-2, but despite this similarity, comparisons with bat viruses suggest this virus was not an intermediate to SARS-Cov-2. Nevertheless, the risk from zoonotic [a pathogen that jumps from animals to humans] betacoronaviruses should provide another incentive to stamp out the pangolin trade.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Image by JP Chen (2020), research by Ping Liu and Jing-Zhe Jiang, and colleagues

Guangdong Academy of Science, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Pathogens, May 2020

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[imperium-romanum]

Looters Beware: The British Museum Is Leading an International Task Force Fighting the Illicit Trade in Egyptian Antiquities | artnet News

A powerful new database will help experts spot looted artifacts with fake documentation sold to unwitting collectors and even other museums.

The British Museum is taking on a new role: international watchdog for the trade of Egyptian and Nubian artifacts. The museum is employing a team of curators solely dedicated to spotting looted ancient treasure—a move that will have far-reaching implications for collectors, dealers, and other museums.

The London-based team of experts is leading an international task force monitoring the trade in antiquities from Egypt and Sudan. Some items may have been recently looted or stolen and therefore never reported missing; others could have been sold decades ago with fake provenances to unwitting collectors—and even other museums.

Using their expert knowledge of archaeology, a sophisticated new database, and plenty of detective work, the dedicated team at the British Museum is working closely with colleagues in Cairo and Khartoum to identify problematic objects and expose fictitious provenances. They are also looking for works currently on offer at auction houses, galleries, and on websites such as eBay that set off alarm bells. If there is evidence that could lead to an object’s recovery and repatriation, the British Museum reports the information to law enforcement agencies, including Scotland Yard and US Customs.

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[rjzimmerman]

New App Can Help End Illegal 'Tortoiseshell' Material Trade - EcoWatch

While selling real tortoiseshell is now illegal, the practice sadly persists. To fight back, scientists have developed the first-ever app that uses artificial intelligence as a tool against the illegal wildlife trade. Tourists and shoppers can use SEE Shell to determine whether or not a “tortoiseshell” souvenir is genuine.

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

Sea turtles face many threats, from ocean plastic pollution to the climate crisis. However, the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle faces a unique danger: Its spangled shell is highly desirable to create the falsely-named “tortoiseshell” material popular for trinkets and jewelry.

While selling real tortoiseshell is now illegal, the practice sadly persists. To fight back, scientists have developed the first-ever app that uses artificial intelligence as a tool against the illegal wildlife trade. Tourists and shoppers can use SEE Shell to determine whether or not a “tortoiseshell” souvenir is genuine.

“One of the major roadblocks to eliminating the illegal tortoiseshell trade is the difficulty in distinguishing real from fake products, whether by a consumer or law enforcement officer,” SEE Turtles President Brad Nahill said in a WWF press release. “Because telling these products apart can be very difficult, retailers and shoppers often unwittingly contribute to the trade.”

Millions of hawksbill turtles have been killed for tortoiseshell markets in the U.S., Europe and Asia in the last century, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. The material has long been prized for its beautiful amber and brown swirls and its long-lasting quality, according to National Geographic.

“It was plastic before plastic was invented because it’s so malleable,” Nahill told National Geographic.

The turtles have paid a steep price for the material’s desirability, however, and there are now fewer than 25,000 breeding females left alive. Today, a black market in tortoiseshell continues in at least 40 countries, mostly in Central America and Southeast Asia. Most commonly, tortoiseshell is sold to unwitting tourists in gift shops. Because it is easily copied using resin, it’s hard for a non-expert viewer to tell real from fake tortoiseshell.

[imperium-romanum]

What's needed is a comprehensive international strategy to combat the illicit trade in antiquities.

“Looting of artefacts has always been a sign of military might or economic power. Over millennia, conquering generals would take away with them trophies to adorn their cities. In more recent centuries, the wealthy upper classes would make “grand tours” of classical sites and acquire – through whatever means – anything from vases to statues to entire temple friezes to show off at home. Owning a piece of antiquity was seen as demonstrating wealth, a love of ancient culture and, ultimately, one’s own distinction: having things that nobody else could have.”

“At least this is what the looters thought. We should now all know the most apt way to describe this dubious form of collection – and it’s a word that has historical resonance: vandalism.”

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[rjzimmerman]

The plants are being unloaded on the Asian black market.

(I kind of smirked at the caption. Is the smuggling ring succulent? What does a succulent smuggling ring look like? Squishy or solid? Oh, but maybe the author means a smuggling ring that smuggle succulents....that must be it.)

Oh, and guess where the succulents are being smuggled to? China. China, again, the importer of all sorts of protected animals and animal parts, fish and fish parts, and now plants.

Excerpt:

Of all the things that you’d think would have a thriving black market, dainty, drought-resistant plants that look adorable when placed in vintage teacups usually don’t top the list. But, alas, these are strange times and succulents — yes, innocuous and ultra-trendy succulents — are making headlines for being at the center of a highly organized international plant smuggling ring uncovered in northern California.

In recent months, three separate busts have been carried out by state wildlife officials in Mendocino and Humboldt counties as part of a larger crackdown on the illegal poaching of Dudleya farinosa, a type of succulent commonly known as bluff lettuce. Native to the rugged coastlines of Oregon and northern California, Dudleya farinosa is a sought-after specimen on the horticultural black markets of China and South Korea where they sell for as much as $40 to $50 apiece.

Thousands of plants have been swiped by skilled plant poachers from precarious bluffs high above the Pacific Ocean and stuffed into boxes for overseas shipment.

"Pretty unusual case for us," Patrick Foy, a captain with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), tells Bay Area CBS affiliate KPIX of the ongoing investigation. "Like nothing we’ve seen before in terms of the scale and the type of poaching involved."

Botanist Stephen McCabe, a Dudleya expert who serves as emeritus director of research at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum, explains to KPIX that the plants are particularly prized in Asia due to their unique color characteristics and resemblance to the lotus flower. Per the San Jose Mercury News, the emerging Chinese middle class, which previously could not afford such luxuries as decorative plants, is fueling much of the demand.

[cyallowitz]

World Parrot Day: The Illegal Parrot Trade

Last time I went to the Bronx Zoo, I saw a sign in the World of Birds.  It stated that for every parrot that is smuggled into the country, 10 die.  Later that day, I was looking for May holidays and saw this one.  It made me want to make a simple post with facts about the Illegal Parrot Trade: The illegal parrot trade is considered the third largest black market industry behind drugs and guns. …

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