“On the Trail” n°41
the defaunation bulletin
(pdf, 230 pages – 7.9 Mo)
1,438 events with references, checked, analysed, commented and strengthened
between June 1 and August 31, 2023.
304 iconographic documents, 11 maps and historical archives.
Poaching and smuggling are the mirror of primal machismo. In addition to monitor lizard hemipenes, green turtle, deer, Cape fur seal and donkey penises, this issue n°41 features kangaroo testicles.
Germany, Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland: the European anti-grey wolf league is growing. Wolves are a unifying force, and hatred of the wolf crosses borders. The wolf is the only wild mammal to be killed for no reason other than the obsession to kill another.
Over 100,000 US$/kg of dried gall bladder. Canada, the United States, China, Iran, Pakistan, Taiwan, Viet Nam, India, Russia, France, Italy, Poland, Romania – it’s a global war on bears.
The European Union could be tainted by the trafficking of elephant ivory: ivory statuettes were seized in Austria in wooden statuettes imported from Uganda by a Polish citizen.
Amazements: frills made from the skin of Pampas fox (Lycalopex griseus, Appendix II) from South America are manufactured in Iceland and a Chinese man for Chinese people was organising bear hunts in Alaska with supplements for one night or short time with a prostitute.
Robin des Bois’ monitoring of the French mammoth ivory market between 2020 and 2023 shows that the overwhelming majority of items sold as mammoth ivory may in fact be elephant ivory. The report has been forwarded to CITES and lends weight to the proposal to list mammoth ivory in Appendix II of CITES put forward in 2019 by Kenya and Israel.
“Mammoth” ivory
In South Africa, rhino poaching is declining in the Kruger Park, which has become the Bunker Park, and is spreading elsewhere. The government’s new rhino strategy aims to establish a medical tourism industry in the country, where the upper classes from all over the world would come for cures of crushed horn.
Electricity is making progress. From the 1970s, it burned insects; in 2024, it kills tigers, leopards and elephants.
In 3 months, 24,000 birds were seized in Indonesia, Brazil, India and Italy, including 17,932 in Indonesia. Not all of them will return to their original habitats. According to Interpol, seizures worldwide accounted for only 10% of smuggling. The Earth is losing its music and its colours. In Argentina, in a single seizure, there were green, orange, grey, almost black, 5-coloured, omnicoloured, red and white birds. In India, orange munias are dyed red to avoid detection by the authorities. They then go from being a protected species to one that can be traded.
Synthetic, metallic, electric, prolific, toxic, explosive, in the snow and in the tropics, pathetic traps kill and cruelty oozes out.
The Chrysiridia rhipheus butterflies featured in issue 41 are native to Madagascar. They are threatened by illegal logging of dry and rainforests and by poaching. They are sold over the counter. The species is not listed in the CITES Appendices, even though it should be in Appendix I. Specimens sell for up to 150 US$ each. Chinese customs seized them as part of a general ban on importing wild or domestic animals, dead or alive, without permission.
The Japan-South Korea axis and the Iceland-Norway-Denmark/Greenland core are on the whale’s geopolitical agenda. Crumbling under the alibi of human food sovereignty, pollution and collisions, whale is threatened as never before. The International Whaling Commission meeting in Peru at the end of September will tell us more about its friends, false friends and enemies. In India, the growing number of ambergris seizures raises questions about the fate of sperm whales.
Photos that hurt:
Page 6 ref. 6; Page 21 ref. 27; Page 27 ref. 76; Page 38 ref. 24; Page 48, ref. 39; Page 60 ref.14; Page 77 ref. 8; Page 79 ref. 1; Page 85; Page 99 ref. 13; Page 103 ref. 15; Page 129 ref. 134; Page 218 ref. 10.
Photos that make you feel good:
Page 65 ref. 21; Page 91; Page 103, ref. 16; Page 105, ref. 28; Page 114 ref. 72; Page 117 ref. 87; Page 130 ref. 141.
Issue 41 of “On the Trail”. 230 pages. 1,438 events. 304 photos and 11 maps. 1,100 sources.
https://robindesbois.org/wp-content/uploads/ON_THE_TRAIL_41.pdf
This is a substantial work and it’s available free of charge. It was produced and translated by 8 women and 4 men aged between 20 and 77, of French, American and Ecuadorian nationality, thanks to donations from the Fondation Brigitte Bardot, the Fondation Franz Weber, donors and members of Robin des Bois and the sponsorship of the Séché Environnement Group.
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