illustrated by Brenden Wenzel, AsiaLIFE March 2010
I woke up this morning to find the following news item in my Google Alerts: Vietnam Raids Restaurants Selling Exotic Meats. The piece, which ran on The New York Times Green blog, reports that a large, coordinated raid by the Lam Dong Forest Protection Department involving more than 100 wildlife agents led to the seizure of hundreds of pounds of illegal meat and the arrest of a dozen restaurant owners. The campaign was supported by surveillance work carried out by NGO Wildlife Conservation Society.
Back in March, I travelled into Lam Dong Province to visit a sustainable agro-forestry farm for a cover story on conservation in Vietnam. My research turned up some troubling facts about the imbalance between the profits from the wildlife trade and the resources available to tackle poaching and trafficking. In his research paper Wildlife Trading in Vietnam: Situations, Causes, and Solutions, Nguyen Van Song of the Hanoi University of Agriculture estimated that the Forest Protection Department employee’s monthly pay is roughly equivalent to daily profits at exotic meat restaurants.
Read the entire article in the AsiaLIFE archives, issue 24.
Wish they also had raided An Binh Restaurant (39 Giang Van Minh, An Phu, D2, HCMC) where they keep 8 bears. But the owner seems to be too well connected …