China's Back Door
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past, the following have been the main danger areas, and it remains to be seen whether the new legislation will effectively control them:
1. Cat skins, rhinoceros horns, hornbill casques, birds of paradise skins. The first item is still widely traded; the other three are now rarer;
2. Birds of prey;
3. African elephant ivory. In 1975, Hong Kong imported the ivory from approxi- mately 30,000 elephants, and figures for the first three-quarters of 1976 already exceed the total figure for 1975.
Live animals imported for food pass no health checks and are not slaughtered at official abattoirs. If the latter were made compulsory, it would help in assessing the scope of the trade, and the resulting complications would probably reduce its scale.
The wildlife trade cannot be completely stopped, but its impact could be substantially reduced if it were properly controlled and the number of species restricted. In Hong Kong one learns to recognise that unless the profit motive is respected, there is no hope for reform.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Miss P. Penn, Dr V. Lance, F.O.P. Hechtel, J. Llewellyn, K.T. Leung, and the many others who have provided material for this study. I would also like to thank the Agriculture and Fisheries Department for providing the official figures, which, though still inaccurate, go a long way towards substantiat- ing criticisms that were previously based on unconfirmed estimates.
Michael Webster, 1/F, Block B, Mint Garden. 1-3 Cheong Ming Street, Happy Valley, Hong Kong.
What Goes On
The Director of the Jakarta Zoo received an unsolicited letter from the Director of the Ise-Shima Zoo of Kobe, Japan, A. Yoshikawa, who wanted to buy a bird of paradise (protected). He wrote, . . . it is suggested that the name of the item is to
' be specified just “magpie” instead of "Bird of Paradise" on all necessary documents and when shipped, the tail of the birds is to be pulled out and birds to be painted watercolour so that our sincere desire to get the birds can realize by any means'. Jakarta refused this 'monstrous request', but several weeks later received from the Ise-Shima Zoo a list of nearly 500 species for sale, including lowland gorilla, orang-utan, sable antelope, okapi, Malayan tapir, snow leopard and great red kangaroo, all banned for trade by the International Convention. The going rate for a pair of okapis was 45 million yen (£90,000; $158,400).
The Greedy Predator
Eleonora's falcon is a local and endangered species of the eastern Mediterranean, with the peculiarity that it nests in late summer so as to be able to feed its young on the many migrant passerines passing through the area in autumn. One reason why it is endangered and in the Red Data Book may be the fact that fat young chicks are a Cretan delicacy. On a calm Sunday in mid-September 1974 a small armada of boats appeared off some Cretan islands. At least one landed on Paximada and made off with 30 40 chicks, representing some 20-25 per cent of the island's total chick population. Despite Greek protection laws, this exploitation seems to be on the increase, and may be upsetting the balance which the falcon must have reached with its human predator over the centuries.