Struggle for survival

KILLING animals and birds for food and other uses has been and still is a big conservation problem in South-East Asia. Even endangered species end up in the cooking pot or are sold to medicine traders. In some places, the northern hills of Thailand, for instance, the abundance of nature has vanished. There is no sound of birds or animals, no sign of anything that is not human or insect. 

The comparatively few bigger animals – the Indo-Chinese tiger, the bears, the elephants – have retreated into the deep forests where they are under increasing pressure from those who want their environment or their carcasses. 

 

Once known as 'The Land of a Million Elephants', Laos now has no more than 400 of these majestic beasts left in the wild.

The link between poverty and the stripping of the environment is very clear. People are desperately poor, most living on subsistence or slash-and-burn farming, and many exist on what they can find or kill in the jungle. Vast numbers outside the main towns regard a frog or a bird as a welcome protein boost and a variation to the constant diet of rice and vegetables. 

At the top end of this scale are the subsistence farmers: in Laos, their average annual income is put at US$320 (RM1,200), mostly from the rice they grow. But with the increasing and shifting population trapped in land constrained by the debris of war, it is no longer enough. 

Many villages have a rice deficit, malnourishment is widespread, and the bland economic indicator masks the reality of trying to live without money. Aid workers in northern Laos put the average cash income at US$40 (RM$150) a year to buy all a family’s needs from cooking oil and salt to clothes, medicines and the books and pencils that are vital because children cannot go to school without them – and children are a family’s hope for a future. 

Further down the scale are the slash-and-burn farmers who grow mostly sticky rice on the hillsides, an environmental problem and, in Laos, an extremely hazardous occupation because of the unexploded bombs and other weapons left over from the Vietnam War. Yields, even in a good year, are poor and food has to be supplemented. 

Then there are those who live on what the jungle provides: the flowers of the wild banana, the rattan and bamboo shoots, the small creatures and insects, the bear or rare deer. Choice catches, like a small wild pig, often end up in someone else’s cooking pot: they are sold, trussed up, to passing drivers and bus passengers on the country’s expanding road system that is attracting families from the remote mountains and jungle. A small wild pig sells for as little as US75 cents (RM2.85) on the road and the sellers look as pleased as lottery winners. 

 

A small boat making its way across the Mekong River. Laos, one of the poorest countries in the world, is doing what it can to conserve its forests and wildlife.

Many see the jungle as their natural provider and cannot understand the concept of conservation. Here, in this collision between the animal world and human needs and beliefs, the killing of a rare tiger and the theft of her cubs for dismembering by the Chinese medicine trade can bring in more cash than most families see in two or three years. Killing a bear to eat amounts to a feast. 

The result has been a terrible slaughter of the animals and birds – and the increasing threat to whole species as more people chase fewer of them. But now, Laos, one of the poorest countries in the world, is doing what it can to conserve its forests and wildlife. A major breakthrough in Luang Prabang province in the north came three years ago when the agriculture and forestry department confiscated all hunting guns. 

“There were thousands of them,” says Somphong Pradichit, the department’s deputy director general. “There are more than 60,000 families in the province and almost all had at least one gun and rural families had two or three.” 

The officials did not stoke resentment by destroying the weapons. They just put them in a store so they could rust away. Some families kept back guns or made new ones, although it is now illegal to own or carry a gun. “We couldn’t control them all, and hunters still come in from provinces where the guns have not been collected, but it has helped,” says Pradichit. 

His department’s efforts are backed by government laws – in line with international agreements – forbidding the killing of endangered species or the trading in them. But the rest – the wild pigs, for example, like rabbits in England – are fair game. 

Two casualties of the clash between people and animals are being housed in and near the old royal town of Luang Prabang: one, Phet (pronounced “pet” and meaning “diamond”) is a sleekly beautiful two-year-old Indo-Chinese tiger, which was rescued just hours before she was due to be handed over to a Chinese medicine trader. 

She was a week old and had been sold four times before foresters discovered and confiscated her. Her mother had been killed on the Plain of Jars and her two brothers were in such poor condition that they died. 

A century ago there were about 100,000 Indo-Chinese tigers in Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia. Today, some specialists put the population at about 1,500 – perhaps about 500 to 600 in Laos (mostly in the south), Cambodia and Vietnam; and up to 1,000 in Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia. 

They are not the only ones in trouble. The “Land of a Million Elephants”, as Laos was known, has no more than 400 left in the wild and the Mekong’s Irrawaddy dolphins face extinction by the end of this decade. 

 

Subsistence farmers in Laos earn an average annual income of the equivalent of RM1,200, mostly from the rice they grow.

Even the effort to save Phet nearly ended in tragedy. “Phet nearly died,” said Pradichit. “We gave her milk but it was difficult for her to digest. We asked a friend at a European Union project to search the Internet to get advice.” 

The advice came from Britain’s Care for the Wild International, which told the forestry service how to help Phet and then started a long-term project to re-house and feed her. She can never be returned to the wild: she cannot hunt and, because she likes people, she would be easy to kill. 

Phet played an important part in triggering the establishment of the provincial Committee for the Rescue of Confiscated Wild Animals, which ties together a powerful alliance drawn from the top officials of the forestry department, the culture and propaganda department, the tourism office and the international cooperation office. 

The other rescued animal at Luang Prabang is a young bear, kept by a farmer who shot her mother after she attacked him. She is in as pitiful a condition as Phet was when she was rescued and an Australian bear charity has offered to find the cash for a compound next to Phet. At the moment she is being kept in a small run next to the government’s guest house – used for top officials when they visit the town. “People do not like her to be kept like this but it is the best we can do for her,” says Pradichit. “If we released her, she would be killed. 

“People eat bears and any other animals. They do not see why they cannot take anything from the jungle. We are telling them at public meetings and we are telling the children in schools that wildlife must be protected. The children understand but older people do not care – they want to kill and eat them.” 

The size of Pradichit’s problems in protecting wildlife can be seen in a few facts: the province has 11 districts, with two or three foresters in each; protecting wildlife is on top of the foresters’ usual duties; officials have no transport and get around by public bus; and there is neither budget nor specialist staff for wildlife protection. 

“I would like to form a wildlife team to be more strict with conservation,” said Pradichit, whose dreams of funding cannot stretch to having a motorcycle for each district. 

But by collecting the guns, running down some of the poachers and illegal traders, and getting on with the huge job of educating the children, he has made a start. – Guardian Newspapers Limited

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