Trading in Extinction: The Dark Side of Hong Kong's Wildlife Trade- report

Pure Tortoise Power

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Jan 7, 2019
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Hong Kong
This is a report, so brace yourself. It has a lot of interesting stuff. I am not sure how they thinj they will have an impact by criminalizing demanded goods. It just transfers them to the black market and makes them even more poorly regulated.

https://www.admcf.org/research-repo...n-dark-side-hong-kongs-wildlife-trade-report/
I myself am from Hong Kong. And I can prove that it's indeed true. Just today, 2 men were arrested for illegally transporting the "blue tongue lizard" from Australia to Hong Kong and to be sold as pets. These lizards are endangered and highly protected by law. Not only were they arrested for illegally translation of these lizards, they were also charged for animal cruelty, as they were put in socks, which tightly enclosed them and then put in a small suitcase. To further avoid detection, they even put aluminium foil inside the case. This caused a great amount of casualties of the poor lizards, as they died of suffocation. I just can't believe stuff that humans do just to earn money. It's awful.

Another recent case, is that some other people were arrested for illegally transporting the sperms and fertilised eggs of Wagyu which is a breed of Japanese cattles which are popular among Hong Kong people as tasty food. The sperms and eggs are believed to be transported to Hong Kong or mainland China for starting a Wagyu farm in order to save import costs.

I hate to say it, but I believe there are a myraid of undiscovered cases that have been right under our noses for a while. Even the sully that I bought could have been illegally transported.

Black markets couldn't be the only legal /moral problem source. There is a place in Hong Kong, famous with the name of "goldfish Street", what it does, well self explanatory. But other than goldfish, there are also stores that sell turtles, torts, some amphibians, you name it. In ALL of the stores that sells torts, the enclosures' conditions for them are not close to right, humidity is low, the lamps are put above some iron meshes meaning the temps couldn't be high enough, no hides. But that's not the main issue. The thing is, I see like 30 hatchlings being sold, and for yearlings, well, only like 5.what do you think happened to the missing ones. Of course, you may think that they were all sold to the owners right? I doubt that, I've been there so many times, and every single time, I barely see anyone even interested in buying torts, as there are so many requirements in order for the tort to thrive. There is also a possibility that the sellers returned the leftover torts to the breeder, but they bought the hatchlings from the breeder, I don't think the breeder would accept returned hatchlings. Perhaps I'm overthinking, but I think the leftover torts are just thrown away. I hope that's not the case.

As much as we want to stop these from happening, there's just no way to eliminate such actions thoroughly. I personally the laws aren't strict enough, and... The detectors at the airport aren't advanced enough... How'd I know? No, I don't do those things mentioned above. It's just that a piece of metal was inserted in my spine from a surgery and you know those detectors are supposed to detect the metal in my body? They failed their job...
 
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