The black market in China for tiger products

Global Crime

Volumn 10, Issue 1-2, 2009, Pages 124-143

  Moyle, Brendan ^a  

^a MASSEY UNIVERSITY   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

China; Organized crime; Poaching; Tiger; Transaction costs

Indexed keywords

EID: 68149170205     PISSN: 17440572     EISSN: 17440580     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/17440570902783921     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Jacqueline L. Schneider, 'Reducing the Illicit Trade in Endangered Wildlife: The Market Reduction Approach', Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 3 (2008): 274-95.
2. Steven Broad, Teresa Mulliken and Dilys Roe, 'The Nature and Extent of Legal and Illegal Trade in Wildlife', in The Trade in Wildlife: Regulation for Conservation, ed. Sara Oldfield (London: Earthscan Publications, 2003), 3-22.
3. Schneider, 'Reducing the Illicit Trade in Endangered Wildlife', 282.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Eric Dinerstein, Colby Loucks, Eric Wikramanayake, Joshua Ginsberg, Eric Sanderson, John Seidensticker, Jessica Forrest, Gosia Bryja, Andrea Heydlauff, Sybille Klenzendorf, Peter Leimgruber, Judey Mills, Timothy G. O'Brien, Mahenddra Shrestha, Ross Simons and Melissa Songer, 'The Fate of Wild Tigers', Bioscience 57 (2004): 508-14.
8. Ibid., 508, 510.
9. Ibid., 509.
10. Ronald Tilson, Hu Defu, Jeff Muntifering and Philip J. Nyhus, 'Dramatic Decline of Wild South China Tigers Panthera tigris amoyensis: Field Survery of Priority Tiger Reserves', Oryx 38 (2004): 40-47.
11. The International Workshop on Strategy for Tiger Conservation, Harbin, China, 6 July 2007.
12. Dinerstein et al., 'The Fate of Wild Tigers', 508-509.
13. Eugene Lapointe, personal communication, 6 July 2007.
14. Belinda Wright, personal communication, 6 July 2007.
15. Oliver E. Williamson, 'The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, looking Ahead', Journal of Economic Literature 38, no. 3 (2000): 595-613.
16. Schneider. 'Reducing the Illicit Trade in Endangered Wildlife'.
17. Peter Reuter and Mark Kleiman, 'Risks and Prices: An Economic Analysis of Drug Enforcement', Crime and Justice 7 (1986): 289-340.
18. Gary S. Becker, 'Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach', Journal of Political Economy, 169 (1968): 176-77.
19. Bill McCarthy, 'New Economics of Sociological Criminology', Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 417-42.
20. Ibid.
21. Reuter and Kleiman, 'Risks and Prices'.
22. Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Skinning the Cat: Crime and Politics of the Big Cat Skin Trade, September 2006.
23. Environmental Investigation Agency, The Tiger Skin Trail, October 2004.
24. Broad et al., ' The Nature and Extent of Legal and Illegal Trade in Wildlife'. The authors discuss a study on the TCM market in Hong Kong conducted by TRAFFIC.
25. Navin Singh Khadka, 'Double Trouble for Nepal's Tigers', BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7607203.stm (accessed 20 September 2008).
26. Campell Plowden and David Bowles, 'The Illegal Market in Tiger Parts in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia', Oryx 31 (1997): 59-66.
27. Schneider, 'Reducing the Illicit Trade in Endangered Wildlife'.
28. Biswajeet Banerjee, 'Tiger Poaching Ring Busted by Indian Police', National Geographic News, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/47620673.html (accessed 2 November 2008). Cash offers of between $1400 and 1500 for each tiger are common. In rural communities living in or proximate to forests, this is typically well above average wages.
29. Broad et al., 'The Nature and Extent of Legal and Illegal Trade in Wildlife'.
30. BBC News, 'Cambodia Tiger Hunter Gets jail', http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/ fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/4211506.stm/ (accessed 19 September 2008).
31. TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC Bulletin Seizures and Prosecutions 6, no. 3 (1997) to 21, no. 3 (2008), 91.
32. EIA, Skinning the Cat, 16-17. Sansar Chand began as a poacher and expanded his operations to eventually smuggle thousands of skins into Kashmir and Nepal.
33. Plowden and Bowles, 'The Illegal Market in Tiger Parts in Northern Sumatra'.
34. Han McGirk and Annabel Fallon, Scandal of Zoo's Missing Tigers, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/ scandal-of-zoos-missing-tigers-562656.html (accessed 19 September 2008).
35. Anh Tuan and Ha Nguyen, Extinction Threatens Viet Nam Tigers, http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=02SUN250508 (accessed 18 September 2008).
36. TRAFFIC, TRAFFIC Bulletin Seizures and Prosecutions, 108.
37. China Wildlife Conservation Agency, 'Second Zoo Tiger Killed in Xchina', http://www.cwca. org.cn/Article/Showarticle.asp?ArtilceID=9493 (accessed 25 September 2008).
38. McGirk and Fallon, Scandal of Zoo's Missing Tigers.
39. CITES, DNA Confirms Tiger Meat for Sale at Chinese Farm, http://www.traffic.org/home/2007/6/12/ cites-dna-test-confirms-tiger-mat-for-sale-at-chinese-farm.html (accessed 18 September 2008).
40. One arrest in Nan Chang (Jiangxi) province involved a trader offering a piece of fake bone for 80 Yuan. The customer negotiated the price down to 20 Yuan. In Guan Zhou province another arrest involved fake tiger bone being sold for 5 Yuan a gram. By way of contrast, a seizure of one skin and 41 pieces of bone in Hai Lin (Heilongjiang province) had a value of 1.5 million Yuan. Given that a recent seizure of skin established a black market price of 500,000 Yuan, each of these pieces of bone would have had an average value of 24,000 Yuan.
41. EIA, Skinning the Cat.
42. EIA, Skinning the Cat, 23.
43. Schneider, 'Reducing the Illicit Trade in Endangered Wildlife'. Schneider also makes the point that it is rare for other illicit products to be distributed by organizations that specialize in wildlife.
44. Kristin Nowell and Xu Ling. Taming the Tiger Trade: China's Market for Wild and Captive Tiger Products since the 1993 Domestic Trade Ban (TRAFFIC, March 2007).
45. Ibid.
46. Brian Gratwicke, Judy Mills, Adam Dutton, Grace Gabriel, Barney Long, John Seidensticker, Belina Wright, Wang You and Li Zhang. 'Attitudes Toward Consumption and Conservation of Tigers in China', PLos ONE, 3, no. 7 (2008): 1-7.
47. EIA, Skinning the Cat, 23, reports three instances of seizures in the Tibetan Autonomous Region in the same period.
48. Juan Carlos Vasquez. 'Compliance and Enforcement Mechanisms of CITES', in The Trade in Wildlife: Regulation for Conservation, ed. Sara Oldfield (London: Earthscan, 2003), 63-9.
49. Ibid., 68.
50. Chinese sources indicate that most arrests for trade in real tiger-parts came from tip-offs from the public.
51. Brendan Moyle, 'Regulation, Conservation and Incentives', in The Trade in Wildlife, ed. Sarah Oldfield (London: Earthscan, 2003), 41-51.
52. Reuter and Kleiman, 'Risks and Prices'.
53. NZPA, 'Tuatara Theft Man Held in Custody', The Press, 4 September 1997, second edition.
54. Raymond Hoser, Smuggled-2 (Doncaster, Kotabo Publications, 1996).
55. EIA, Skinning the Cat, 15.
56. Reuter and Kleiman, 'Risks and Prices'.
57. Ibid., 292.