CONFIDENTIAL
Ry Exter
+
ри
71%
E H Nichols Esq OBE JP
Director of Agriculture and Fisheries Agriculture and Fisheries Department HONG KONG
REF.
15 March 1977
THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANIMALS, THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS AND THE ANIMALS AND PLANTS (PROTECTION OF ENDANGERED SPECIES) ORDINANCE AND SO ON
1.
I am writing to thank you for your long and very helpful letter of 11 February which I have now circulated around interested departments here. It sets Miss Camille Tsu's complaints very much in context and I now look on her, and them, with less alarm.
2. I enclose, for your file, a copy of Colin Pratt's most recent contribution, hardly valuable in itself except to underline the extent of the grapevine which links all these protectionist societies. Looking back through our files I see that the International Society for the Protection of Animals have links with the RSPCA here, the SCPA in Hong Kong, the International Society for the Protection of Animals here, the International Council for Bird Preservation, your own Birdwatching and Natural History Societies, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the National Audubon Society of the United States, the Fauna Preservation Society, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Friends of the Earth and so on. The array is very formidable indeed.
3. We have been watching here to see whether opinion has been building up through these societies on Hong Kong matters. It seems not, or at least not yet, But, as you know, protectionist issues can be very sensitive indeed. Italian songbirds last year attracted far more attention than they perhaps deserved and I see no reason, alas, why Hong Kong's trade in elephant ivory could not attract the same degree of critical attention, however ill-deserved. One sad purpose of this letter therefore isto point an obvious warning: the issues exist and so, through the network of protectionist societies, does the organisation to arouse a potential interest in them in the UK that could be of real embarrassment to you and us.
If a storm does blow up, however good your recent efforts and I myself consider them very good and your achievements likewise your case may well be simply ignored.
CONFIDENTIAL
14.
All this