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to operate a piece of legislation, unfortunate and anomalous, regarding he criteria under which animal traders licences were issued. In this former legislation, which has since been superceded, undue attention had been given to dimensional details of cages without any reference to the numbers and size of animals to be confined therein. There was also, amongst other things, complete prohibition on such shops operating anywhere but in ground floor premises no matter what species of animals were being maintained or the environmental conditions under which they were kept. Thus the department was placed in an invidious position where legally it could not license many of the animal traders, including Shing Lee Hong, and, under these circumstances, we were advised that we should not therefore enter into prosecutions for "trading without a licence" unless there were overriding reasons for so doing.
Unfortunately the attitude of Miss Penn and others at that time was that any action that could be taken to disrupt and/or stop the trade in China's wildlife was justifiable. It would appear that Miss Tsu has now taken it upon herself to assume Miss Penn's mantle. It is also perhaps significant that in discussions these protagonists prefer to ignore the sovereign right of China to determine which, if any, of its wildlife is endangered and therefore in need of protection.
Referring to para. 6 of the same letter, again Miss Tsu's comments are inaccurate and misleading. The stance adopted by this office is simply that all are equal at law. If there is an overriding political reason not to prosecute then the decision is taken elsewhere. However, having said this there can be several circumstances when it is neither necessary nor desirable to enforce the full letter of the law to the extent of prosecution. When new legislation has been enacted it is quite normal to allow a period of "grace" to enable adjustments and regularisation to be effected. This was done in the case of our endangered species legislation; and, although the legal grace period ran out at the end of November, there was little merit in forcing a deliberate confrontation when more tactful alternatives were available and being implemented.
Far from adopting a laissez faire attitude either towards animal dealers or the protection of endangered species, this department has been making steady progress over the years. In fact, until 1976, our legislation on protection of endangered species was in advance of the United Kingdom; and we were somewhat astounded to learn, when we came to seek to dispose of Chinese Salamanders confiscated by us after prosecution, that there was at that time no controls over the import of such animals into either the U.K. or the Netherlands. In 1976 we enacted a new Ordinance, mentioned above, to more effectively replace our earlier "Animals and Birds (Restriction of Importation and Possession) Ordinance. Even so our present law is not yet completely in line with the Convention, for reasons no doubt known to you. We are working on this, however, in the hope that in the not too distant future it will be possible to remove the reservations entered. In other words, this office has endeavoured to ensure the best possible legislation at any given point in time, and acceptable to our legislators. We have also successfully reduced the number of licensed animal traders from 281 in 1961 to 149 in March 1976; and I have no doubt that these numbers will continue to fall due to pressure from this department.
Referring now to para. 8 of Miss Tsu's letter in which she suggests that action should be taken at the customs import checkpoint to prevent the entrance of endangered species, this has been considered and rejected as impractical. Not only are there physical problems of inspection but the animals will already have entered Hong Kong and it is
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