Momentum builds to ban shark fin soup, but is needed for other species, too

News reports show that an increasing number of restaurants are taking shark fin soup off the menu and many cities in Asia and North America are banning the import of shark fins, or from servince soup made from them. In Canada, a Member of Parliament is preparing to table a bill for legislation to make shark fin soup illegal in Canada. This is because of the inhumane nature of the "finning" (in which fins are cut from live sharks, which are then returned to the sea to die agonizingly and slowly); and because the practice, and the culinary tradition that encourages it, is driving many species of shark toward extinction. The soup is mainly for Chinese markets in China and in Chinese communities elsewhere, to whom shark fin soup is considered a delicacy, not only for its flavour, but because anything exotic or rare is highly valued in Chinese cuisine and that of southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam.

It is not just sharks that are endangered by Chinese and other southeast Asian peoples’ predilection for exotic foods and medicines. A Vietnamese rhinoceros (a subspecies of Javan rhino) is probably extinct because of this, according to a 2011 report; Vietnam, besides having its own flourishing endangered species food/medicine industry, is a major conduit for trafficking endangered species into China. Vietnamese smugglers and Chinese traders are behind the current (since 2008) upswing in African rhinoceros poaching, both black and white rhinoceros species. Since 2008, some 2000 (at least) white rhinos and many of the more endangered black rhinos have been poached from Kruger National Park, South Africa, for example, and one was even killed for its horn in tiny Swaziland. England has seen several dozen museum specimens of mounted rhinoceros heads stolen from their glass display cages this year.

I’ve been studying and writing a series of scientific journal papers on southeast Asian primates, and every one I have written about is either endangered or critically imperilled, i.e., on the verge extinction.

Here is one of many ironies: a species of gibbon (a hominoid ape, like us) on Hainan Island, China, is down to perhaps fewer than 20 individuals left in the world, and until last year was listed as one of the 25 most endangered primates in the world (a report prepared every five years by the IUCN and WWF). But in 2010, a few score of individuals of another species in the same genus were discovered hanging on (ahem! –gibbons are brachiators) in the mountains along the Vietnam-China border. This species had been thought extinct for the last 100 years, so the Hainan Black Gibbon was removed from the 25-most-endangered list to make room for the rediscovered Eastern Black Gibbon. How can a species of primate with fewer than two score left in the world not be on the list of the world’s most endangered primates?

The species that I most recently studied, the White-cheeked Gibbon (see reference below), is extirpated from China, nearly extirpated from Vietnam where only 100 or so remain, and down to a few hundred individuals in Laos. A species of monkey that I published a paper on last year, endemic to Vietnam, is down to fewer than 200 individuals in three heavily-fragmented populations, two of which will surely go extinct in the next year or two. These rare species of primates are illegally trapped in every national park in which they still occur (none occur outside of parks), and most are traded into China. Even endangered primates (orangutans, for example) from as far away as Borneo are poached and traded into China.

It would be interesting to take a forensic look at the exotic “medicines” for sale in Vancouver’s Chinatown, to see what endangered species might turn up there.

Papers cited:

Harding, LE. 2012. Nomascus leucogenys. Mammalian Species 44(890):1–15

Harding, LE. 2011. Trachypithecus delacouri. Mammalian Species 43(880):118-128

Harding, L.E. 2011. Rare Mammals Recorded in Borneo, Malaysia. Taprobanica 3(2):107–109

Harding, L.E. 2011. Unusual Affiliative Behaviour in Orangutans. Taprobanica 3(2):110–111

Harding, L.E. 2011. Red morph of silvered lutung (Trachypithecus cristatus) rediscovered in Borneo, Malaysia. Taprobanica 3(1): 47-48

Harding, LE. 2010. Trachypithecus cristatus. Mammalian Species. 42(862):149–165