A Survey of Illegal Wildlife Products Available in Southeast Asia in 2023
In 2018, I took a trip around a few Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos. Though I was interested in the wonderful things those countries had to offer, such as the rich culture and nature, I also took an interest in the dark world of wildlife trafficking. Reports by the likes of Karl Ammann had opened my eyes to the multi-billion-dollar illegal market, which appears to be more flagrant than other illegal markets such as drugs and weapons.
As such, I took some time in my travels to see if some of the horrors, like those that could be seen in Mong La, Myanmar, in the mid-2010s, were still around. During my 2018 trip, I saw bear bile and tiger bone wine for sale in Boten, Laos. There was also a restaurant there that had a pangolin on its sign. In the town of Tachileik, Myanmar, next to the Thai border, I saw ivory for sale. In the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone of Laos, I saw distraught tigers and Asiatic black bears anxiously pacing and rubbing their heads raw against their tiny cages. That place was called a “zoo,” but there were rumors that those animals were for sale to those with money and exotic tastes.
Fast forward to 2023. Following a global pandemic that some suspect may have had zoonotic origins and calls for wildlife markets like Wuhan’s Huanan Market and Thailand’s Chatuchak Market to be closed, I returned to see if anything had changed.
It is suspected that the wildlife trade has played a role in a number of diseases entering humans, including ebola, monkeypox, H5N1, and SARS.
I had heard that much of the trade had moved online during the pandemic, but I still found illegal wildlife products for sale out in the open.
Starting with Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, Thailand, there is still an extraordinary amount of species for sale. I hadn’t visited this site prior to the pandemic, so I cannot speak to any changes, but there were reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds, sometimes stacked in cages that allowed excrement to fall from higher cages to lower ones containing different species. As well as the more restrained animals, there were cats, dogs, and chickens walking around the market. It didn’t appear to be a place where precautions were being taken to avoid interspecies disease transmission.
The situation in Tachileik, Myanmar, seemed worse than I remembered. I’m not sure how much the Burmese authorities cared prior to the civil war, but it certainly doesn’t look like wildlife trafficking is much of a concern for them at this time. Shops advertised ivory on signs out front. There were pieces of tiger skin for sale. All of this was in the little market that is perhaps the main destination for cross-border shoppers and people on visa runs.
I visited more places in Laos than on my previous trip, and I made sure to revisit the places I had visited in 2018. In terms of crime, I wasn’t happy with what I found.
In Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, the central market had various ivory products on offer, and a restaurant staffed by North Koreans, the Blue Flower Restaurant, sold North Korean tiger bone wine.
Boten is a city in Northern Laos, the last stop before the Chinese border, connected to Laos’ new Chinese built high-speed rail system. It is a special economic zone that is largely Chinese in appearance. Other than the train station, which is a few kilometers from the town, and the actual border crossing, Lao police and authorities did not seem to be present.
Bear bile was still easy to find. Tiger bone wine wasn’t as open as it was in 2018, but the jars in some restaurants that were once clearly labeled as tiger bone wine were still there, with mysterious numbers instead of labels that clearly indicated their contents. Fortunately, the restaurant that had pangolin on the sign had closed down.
In Vang Vieng, I found a shop similar to those in the Tachileik market, filled with an array of wildlife products, including horns, turtle shells, and ivory jewelry. I also found bear bile front and center in a small supermarket.
In Luang Prabang, I found not only bear bile products but also tiger bone products in a Chinese supermarket. The product itself was manufactured in Myanmar’s Wa State, near the Chinese border and home to the aforementioned Mong La. Interestingly, I didn’t find that same product for sale in Myanmar.
One of the most upsetting parts of my trip was my experience at the Luang Prabang airport. The airport had posters everywhere featuring Yao Ming telling people not to buy ivory products. But in one of the departure area shops, I saw a familiar-looking, smooth white material being sold as jewelry. I asked the woman at the shop what it was made of. She asked me to wait a moment, while she opened her phone. Then she showed me an image of an elephant tusk on her phone.
The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Laos had undergone some major changes, at least on the surface. The zoo was gone, leveled for some new development project. More and more skyscrapers mark the skyline. And I didn’t see any illegal wildlife products for sale. That is not to say they don’t exist, but they were not easy to find for someone just looking around shops.
Although wildlife crimes pose huge threats in terms of biodiversity and health, the punishment for wildlife crimes is often small compared to the profits to be made. Fines can be miniscule, and prison sentences can be short or nonexistent. The risk is low and the reward is high, for those interested in profiting from the trade. But to lessen the chances of another pandemic and to protect endangered species, more must be done to stop the trade.
If you want to learn more about wildlife trafficking, you may want to check out Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking by Rachel Love Nuwer.
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