TRADE STORIES

Golden-headed lion tamarin - Leontopithecus chrysomelas

While there are between 6,000 and 15,000 of these tamarins living in the wild in Brazil’s southern Bahia state, only 2 to 5 percent of their original Atlantic coastal rainforest habitat remains. As a consequence, they live in widely scattered groups, each comprising no more than about 250 individuals. With such small, geographically isolated populations, the tamarins are subject to all sorts of problems associated with inbreeding: genetic drift (an increase in random mutations), inbreeding depression (lack of general vigor), lack of genetic diversity (a paucity of helpfully different genes), and lower recruitment rates (the addition of new members to the group). There are perhaps 600 golden-headed lion tamarins in captivity, and they are still being trapped illegally for sale as pets. Keeping individuals of a species as close to extinction as this tamarin out of the worldwide breeding population endangers the survivability of the species as a whole. Fortunately, there is a consortium of conservation groups and local organizations working in concert to protect this beautiful little animal.

Yellow-headed day gecko - Phelsuma klemmeri

Madagascar is home to many exotic reptiles found nowhere else, including two-thirds of the world’s chameleon species, the leaf-nosed snake, the leaf-tailed gecko, this colorful day gecko, and the tiny Brookesia gecko. Middlemen will pay trappers in Madagascar a quarter apiece for leaf-tailed geckos; in the West, a pair may sell for up to $250. A Phelsuma gecko that costs $1.20 in Madagascar can bring $70 to $100 in the United States. A radiated tortoise sold to a middleman for $4 is worth $2,000 once it is smuggled out of the country; if it is a distinctively marked adult female, it may fetch as much as $10,000 on the black market. The economics of this trade are simple and compelling: the average annual income in Madagascar for the year 2005 was $300.

Lear's (Indigo) macaw - Anodorhynchus leari

Most of the world’s 16 macaw species are listed as “globally threatened” by BirdLife International. The greatest threat to their survival is deforestation, but there is also heavy pressure from the caged bird trade. The Lear’s macaw, more intensely aqua blue and a bit smaller than the more common hyacinth macaw, is one of the most prized animals on the black market—news reports on a smuggling case in Britain in 2005 noted that a pair could bring $88,500. The species was believed to be extinct in the wild until 1978, when two small populations were found in Eastern Brazil. None of the parrots’ known habitat is within nature reserve or park boundary, and current conservation efforts are sporadic and uncoordinated. As of 2004, there were thought to be only 250 Lear’s macaws left in the wild.

Peruvian swallowtail (Gynandromorph) - Papilio androgeus

Butterfly diversity and plenitude are good indicators of general habitat health. While the main cause of butterfly decline worldwide is habitat degradation, butterfly collecting for the dead stock trade is putting additional pressure on such groups as the birdwing butterflies, which lay relatively few eggs. Captive breeding efforts in many countries try to keep collecting pressure off wild populations. But mounted butterflies have long been popular as decorative objects: an exceptionally large, all-yellow male birdwing, Ornithoptera meridionalis, recently sold over the Internet for $5,000. The Peruvian swallowtail depicted here is a gynandromorph, an individual that exhibits half male and half female characteristics. These hermaphroditic butterflies are quite rare and command the highest prices of all.

Agrias butterfly - Agrias butterfly—Agrias claudina lugens

The habitat of these gorgeous, much sought-after butterflies overlaps with the coca growing regions of Brazil and Peru. Agrias larvae live on wild relatives of the plants that are grown to make cocaine. In the early 1990s the United States Drug Enforcement Agency developed an anti-coca program that called for dusting drug crops with a fungus called Fusarium oxysporum. This pathogen is known to be toxic to humans and has a very high mutagenicity rate. A diverse group of international nonprofit organizations, including the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, protested Fusarium use, calling it a biological weapon, and President Clinton scrapped the plan. Unfortunately, Fusarium is ill-advisedly being used once again—this time as part of the U.S. State Department’s “Plan Columbia,” which requires aerial fumigation of coca cultivation areas. Agrias butterflies are just one of the many potential collateral victims of this type of indiscriminate herbicide use.

Hawk moth - Xanthopan morgani praedicta

In 1862 Darwin was sent a specimen of the lovely Madagascan comet orchid Angraecum sesquipedale. Because the orchid had a 30-centimeter nectary deep in its center, Darwin postulated that there must be a creature that had a proboscis, or sipper, long enough to get at the nectar and thereby pollinate the flower. Forty-one years later, this hawk moth was discovered, fulfilling Darwin’s prediction. Angraecum sesquipedale is widely cultivated.

Slipper orchid - Paphiopedilum sanderianum

In the 1960s and ’70s, the IUCN, which has representatives from 80 governments, drafted guidelines for international trade in endangered plants and animals. Those guidelines are now revised and monitored by CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Many of CITES’s regulations and processes are intended to help curb poaching and black-market traffic. All of the Paphiopedilums, for example, are ranked as “Appendix 1” by CITES, which means that international commercial trade is prohibited. When an orchid species becomes the rage, its skyrocketing value makes wild specimens vulnerable to theft and poaching. But the greatest threat by far to the survival of wild orchid populations is habitat destruction, and conservationists often have trouble getting CITES permits to remove plants in time to save them from large-scale operations such as logging, mining, road building, and dam construction, particularly in remote areas. Commercial cultivation is one strategy to reduce collecting pressure on wild populations. However, some orchids prove to be very difficult to propagate, and wild populations are depleted in the attempt. There is heated and passionate controversy among orchid breeders, fanciers, and scholars on how best to foster both the protection and the cultivation of orchids.