Tiger in the bank

natural resources,” he says. But much of the trade is black, illegal. “A villager in Madagascar for whom a dollar is a day’s salary can take a radiated tortoise, resplendent in its starburst shell, and sell it at a profit of five dollars to a local middleman. That tortoise will be smuggled in a suitcase or false-bottomed crate to a distribution point in Asia, perhaps Singapore or Bangkok, and then onward, to be bought by a collector in Europe, North America or Japan for five thousand dollars.” Such enormous sums only increase the pressure on these species and increasing rarity only adds to their value. “Turtles and tortoises have become a global trade item. In the case of the rarest and most beautiful species — and therefore the most valuable — the black market profits to be made may in some cases rival those from the global trade in narcotics.” Stanford warns of the speed and extent of loss of these animals in the face of such onslaughts. And even where they are not being directly targeted, habitat loss is adding additional pressure. “There are many countries in Southeast Asia that have for millennia been centres of biodiversity which are now emptied of their entire tortoise and turtle fauna. Vietnam is almost devoid of its many species of native tortoises and freshwater turtles — they’ve all gone to markets in China. Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Indonesia are close behind,” Stanford says. Conservationists refer to China as the “black hole” of wildlife conservation for its ongoing appetite for the animals of the entire Asian continent. A nation and an industry hungry to supply an ever more affluent society of tortoise eaters and pet-keepers will not be denied. People often worry about the legacy, environmental and otherwise, they will leave their children and grandchildren. Stanford makes clear that several tortoise species are unlikely to last that long and will be driven to extinction in a shockingly few number of years. But he points at a few glimmers of hope. Thais, like other Asians, have traditionally eaten tortoises, but there is some encouragement from the Kaeng Krachan National Park in the southwest of the country. This park is one of the largest in southeast Asia and is almost pristine. It is home to the largest population of tigers within a reserve anywhere, plus elephants and every other large Asian mammal species. But it is also a stronghold of the Asian forest tortoise, the largest Asian tortoise, which lives in the mountainous wet forests from eastern India through to Indonesia. Middle-class Thais have embraced ecotourism on the western model, and visit the park to camp during the cool winter season, where sight of a tortoise, or any other species, is all that is sought. “Like the dodo, tortoises are priceless works of art. People of the next millennium will look at the few remaining examples and be saddened the people of our century failed to value them enough to save them,” Stanford writes. “Unless we act now, the last remnants of a once greatflourishing of uniquely strange and wonderful creatures will disappear from the Earth in short order.”