TAIPING, Malaysia; SANTIAGO, Chile--Few points on earth
are farther apart, with more open sea and sky between them, than Taiping,
Malaysia, home of the struggling Taiping Zoo, and Santiago, Chile,
the host city for the 12th Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species Conference of the Parties, called CITES-COP 2002 for short.
Yet the Taiping Zoo and CITES-COP 2002 had an awkward issue to deal with in mid-November, having to do with the zoo illegally buying baby gorillas in the name of conservation. The facts were less in dispute than the intentions behind the January 2002 transaction--and the closest resemblance to common ground between the positions of Taiping and the CITES Secretariat, across 6,000 miles of Pacific Ocean, might have been the rolling deck of a Japanese whaling ship.
The people involved on either side of the Taiping Zoo/CITES controversy over the origins and fate of four recently arrived baby gorillas all consider themselves animal-loving scientists. Taiping state science, environment, health and technology committee chair Ho Chang Wong professes bewilderment at the demands of primatologist Jane Goodall, among others, who on October 30 told Malaysian national science, technology, and environment minister Sari Law Hieng Ding that the four young gorillas should immediately be removed from the Taiping Zoo, and should be sent instead to a sanctuary in Africa.
"I believe the Limbe Wildlife Centre in Cameroon would be a suitable home for these four gorillas," Goodall said, pointing out that Limbe already has eight gorillas in residence.
"No party should be allowed to profit either directly or indirectly from the gorillas," Goodall continued. Goodall further asked Sari Law Hieng Ding to prosecute whoever was responsible for bringing the gorillas to Malaysia.
Goodall amplified the previously expressed positions of CITES Secretariat senior enforcement officer John Sellar, the Great Ape Project, and International Primate Protection League founder Shirley McGreal, who first revealed that the four gorillas the Taiping Zoo bought from the Ibadan Zoo in Nigeria were not captive-born--and could not have been, since the Ibadan Zoo had only one adult gorilla.
Taiping Zoo director Kevin Lazarus had represented the young gorillas as having been obtained through a species exchange program, in trade for Malayan tigers and sun bears.
"It is learnt," Malaysia Star reporters Raslan Baharom and Hilary Chiew wrote on October 12, "that the Taiping Municipal Council paid [the equivalent of $65,000 U.S.] to a Penang-based company, which has since ceased operations, to bring in the animals."
"When interviewed by Associated Press," a Great Ape Project case summary said, "workers at the Ibadan Zoo readily admitted that the baby gorillas were caught in the forests of Cameroon," probably by shooting their mothers plus any other adult family members who defended them.
"We plan to breed the gorillas, not be cruel to them," responded Ho Chang Wong to the Malaysia Star, seeming shocked to find himself viewed--at least by animal advocates--as no better than poachers and commercial traffickers.
The Taiping Zoo built its most ambitious habitat yet to house the infant gorillas. Noting the ongoing destruction of wild gorillas and gorilla habitat by rainforest loggers, genocidal warfare, and bushmeat hunters, and believing a climate comfortable for orangutans might be comfortable for gorillas as well, Ho Chang Wong and the other Taiping officials responisble for the city zoo argue that their only aim all along was to help save a rare and fascinating species--and help save the zoo, too, which they acknowledge is in need of animals with drawing power, to help raise the revenue required to achieve world-class zoo standards.
Acknowledging that the Taiping Zoo imported the gorillas from Nigeria with bogus papers, which Taiping Municipal Council president Jamalludin Amini Ahmad continued to deny, and seeking a satisfactory compromise, Sari Law Hieng Ding suggested on October 9 that the baby gorillas might be sent to the Pretoria Zoo in South Africa on an open-ended breeding loan, allowing the Taiping Zoo to import some of the offspring.
That might save face for all parties, but would not actually serve the needs of the Taiping Zoo, and might not do much of substance for the gorillas either, as life behind bars in Pretoria might differ little from life right where they are.
Despite repeated hints and promises during the next five weeks, the gorillas still had not gone anywhere when CITES-COP 2002 convened.
"Malaysia may try to be virtuous until after the CITES conference is over," McGreal told ANIMAL PEOPLE, "and then find a way to keep the gorillas."
Jamalludin Amini Ahmad confirmed to Malaysia Star reporters Baharom and Chiew that the Malaysian Department of Wildlife and National Parks "is working hard to ensure that the animals are not taken back."
But giving up the gorillas in exchange for eventually obtaining some of their offspring seemed to be the most often anticipated outcome of ongoing discussions among the CITES Secretariat, conservation organizations, and zoo officials.
Reported the Malaysia Star, "Dio-nysius Sharma, head of the Malaysian animal conservation unit for the World Wildlife Fund, feels there would be no problem with gorilla offspring coming to Malaysia, since they would be captive-born."
However, "Asked if having these rare gorillas would be a major commercial asset for the Taiping Zoo," the Star continued,
"Sharma said they would not be, 'since most people cannot tell the difference between gorillas and monkeys. To most people, monkeys are monkeys.'"
While discussion about the future of the gorillas dragged on, some primatologists warned that gorillas have very low resistance to the relatively common Asian soil pathogen pseudomonas psuedomallei. The Singapore Zoo lost four gorillas to pseudomonas psuedomallei in 1983, and lost another to it in 1993. A sixth Singapore Zoo gorilla became infected, but was flown to the Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands for emergency care and survived.
Like the illicit gorilla-buyers of Taiping, Japanese national director of fisheries research and environmental protection Masayuki Komatsu thinks of himself as a man of science, reason, and practical diplomacy --and seems to think he knows when to break the rules, or is above having to observe rules.
On November 8, the very day that Japan asked CITES-COP to remove Bryde and minke whales from the list of internationally protected species, the five-vessel Japanese whaling fleet left the port of Shimonoseki to kill a self-assigned "research" quota of 400 minke whales, within the nominally protected Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary.
The sanctuary was designated by a 1994 vote of the International Whaling Committee, which like CITES is a regulatory body created by the United Nations, and like most U.N. regulatory conventions is enforced chiefly by the goodwill of the members. Japan has conducted so-called "research whaling" with impunity within the Southern Oceans Whale Sanctuary every year since it was formally established, but the gesture of defiance this year may have been ill-timed.
Before the day was over, Japan had lost the first two high-profile votes of CITES-COP 2002. The counts were 54-41 against downlisting minke whales and 63-43 against downlisting Bryde whales.
Each downlisting proposal would have required the support of a two-thirds majority of the votes cast in order to pass.
"It's an extremely sad day, because the delegates have not recognized that cultural diversity is just as important as biodiversity," Japanese delegation member Glenn Hema told news media. "Japan doesn't tell other cultures what to do with their beef," Hema insisted-- evidently forgetting the many trade wars fought at the Global Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and World Trade Organization levels over Japanese beef industry protectionism.
"Japan simply does not want to have their culture put down," agreed Japanese Whaling Association consultant Alan Mcnow to Graham Gori of Associated Press.
Responded Humane Society of the U.S. international legal counsel Kitty Block, "In Japan's case, whaling is certainly cultural, but it is not done for subsistence. They are looking to open up commercial whaling."
Yet Japanese efforts to roll back global whale protection appear to be less about whales, despite the potential profits to be made from resuming commercial whaling, than about trying to forestall precedents for international regulation of fisheries.
Observed World Wildlife Fund species programs director Sue Lieberman, "Japan wanted support, not only for its whale proposals, but also to try to block all proposals havng to do with fish, including sea horses."
Obliged to go to press three days before the decisions were made about ivory, in order to attend the International Companion Animal Welfare Conference in Prague, captival of the Czech Republic, ANIMAL PEOPLE could share with readers only the relatively limited outcomes of the first week of the two-week CITES-COP meeting. Few of the preliminary votes were the last word on any of the topics.
But Japan, recruiting support from Canada, Cuba, and Russia, won a quiet but important November 7 vote against adding Black Sea bottlenose dolphins to CITES Appendix I, the list of species that are considered endangered and are therefore excluded from all international commerce. Threatened species, allowed in commerce with trade restrictions, are listed on Appendix II. Georgia, a former part of the Soviet Union, bordering on the Black Sea, proposed that Black Sea bottlenose dolphins should be protected, and received U.S. support. Needing 48 votes to pass, the proposal failed by getting just 40, with 31 "no" votes and 39 abstentions.
The threat to Canada, Cuba, and Russia if Black Seas bottlenose dolphins are put on Appendix I is that other bottlenose dolphins might also be listed as lookalike species. That in turn might cut into their profits as the nations most involved in supplying marine mammals to exhibition and swim-with-dolphins facilities.
Green sea turtles won a round on November 8, however, when a British proposal to allow the Cayman Islands to sell products from hatchery-reared green sea turtle specimens drew only 38 votes, with 24 negatives and 48 abstentions.
The much anticipated CITES-COP 2002 votes on elephant ivory trafficking were scheduled for the second half of the conference to avoid walkouts and deadlocks during the first half.
How the ivory battle would come out was anyone's guess. Twenty-two African nations agreed at a regional caucus just before CITES-COP 2002 convened to support an amendment to the 1989 global ban on ivory trafficking which would allow Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe to sell their accumulated ivory stockpiles, and would also allow them to resume selling some ivory on a regular basis. All four nations claim to have large and growing elephant populations, and to have poaching under control, though the Zimbabwean numbers seem especially suspect in view of the invasions of wildlife habitat in recent years by mobs of armed and economically desperate "war veterans."
Leading the opposition to the proposals issued by Botwana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe are India, Kenya, China, and the U.S.
India, Kenya, and China are each battling poachers to retain fractions of the wild elephant populations that they had just a few decades ago. Like the U.S., each is also worried about the involvement of al Qaida and other Islamic fundamentalist militias in the clandestine ivory traffic. The elephants of Tsavo National Park in Kenya, in particular, have been hard hit over the years by Somali poaching gangs with direct links to the al Qaida network. India and China are concerned that allowing any legal commerce in ivory at all could encourage insurgents--such as the al Qaida affiliates believed to be operating in Jammu-and-Kashmir--to exterminate wild elephants to buy arms.
U.S. President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, trophy hunters all and longtime members of Safari Club International, were until September 11, 2001 seen as likely to favor ivory commerce proposals that might encourage trophy hunting as a mechanism of conservation funding.
Post-September 11, their priorities seem to have shifted, at least for this CITES-COP session.
British Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Peter Greste reported on November 10 that, "National delegations and non-governmental organisations complain that this year's CITES-COP meeting is among the most politicised ever. With allegations of corruption, bribery, espionage and threats," Greste said, "this conference has all the ingredients of a cheap spy thriller--except that at stake is the survival of some of the world's most endangered species."
That sounded much like business-as-usual--but CITES-COP veterans Sue Lieber-man of WWF and Paula Kahumbu of the Kenya Wildlife Service agreed that the atmosphere was more heavily charged than at the previous CITES meetings they had attended.
"Unfortunately," said Lieberman, "we are seeing tremendous politicisation of the discussion between governments, and the level of wheeling and dealing and trading on the decisions is worse than I have ever seen."