TRINIDAD, Bolivia—Amid the intense humidity and bustle of everyday life in Bolivia’s Amazonian region, a river of smuggled exotic animals is flowing toward Asia.
In Bolivia, it’s illegal to kill, consume, or traffic wild animals. The crime is punishable by up to six years in prison.
Members of the Chinese crime syndicate Putian have been trafficking and selling jaguar teeth, pelts, and body parts in several Amazonian towns in the departments of Beni and Santa Cruz.
The operation was originally exposed during a 2018 undercover investigation by Earth League International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The probe revealed how Chinese immigrants living in Bolivia collaborated with members of the Putian to acquire jaguars for the sale of their teeth, organs, and hides in China.
There are an estimated 130,000 jaguars left in the world, and they are considered a threatened species. In Bolivia, their numbers are down to 2,000 to 3,000 animals.
Figures from the IUCN revealed that 200 of the creatures were killed by traffickers from 2014 to 2016. By 2018, another 140 had fallen victim to the criminals, although that figure could be as high as 340 animals.
A three-year investigation by the Bolivian public ministry and the forest and environmental protection police culminated in the arrest of five Chinese nationals in the city of Santa Cruz. The criminals were busted for selling jaguar parts out of the back of a fast-food chicken restaurant.
Yet, despite these efforts, the trafficking of exotic animals persists in Bolivia, creating an uphill battle for conservationists.
“The law is on our side, but it’s hard to enforce,” Beni’s director of wildlife and natural resources, Jorge Aysar Raposo Callau, told The Epoch Times.
By the Skin of Their Teeth
In Callau’s office, a banner hangs behind his desk that declares, “Say no to buying, selling, or capturing wildlife,” along with a free hotline number for people to call and report animal trafficking.“It wasn’t always like this,” Callau said, gesturing toward the banner.
“Until recent years, the only reason locals hunted jaguars was to protect their cattle or children when one tried to attack a village.”
Callau says that Chinese business interests are driving the demand for wild animals, especially jaguar parts. Bolivian authorities confiscated an astounding 684 jaguar fangs from Chinese smugglers as of August 2018. Of that number, customs intercepted 119 at border checkpoints.
It’s evident in the stalls of black market sellers on the outskirts of Trinidad, Bolivia. At the end of a dusty road is a country market, where fruit and vegetable stalls are found alongside kiosks where locals sell products made from illegally procured wild animal parts.
A local woman named Brenda had a variety of wallets, hats, belts, and purses made from jaguar pelts, in addition to puma, anaconda, and caiman on display.
“Only foreigners buy this stuff,” she told The Epoch Times, taking down a man’s wallet made with jaguar fur for closer inspection.
The products made from illegal animal parts on display in Brenda’s stall were priced to sell. They ranged in price from $16 for a small men’s wallet made from anaconda or black caiman leather, to $150 for a jaguar pelt cowboy hat or a ladies’ handbag.
Brenda said she’s aware that Customs may seize any products made from wild animal parts upon leaving the country and that it’s illegal to sell the items she has in her market stall, but doesn’t seem to mind.
At the end of the day, the demand already exists, and Brenda maintains she’s merely one link in a chain of symptoms representing the booming animal trafficking industry that China has brought to the region.
While she said that China is the main buyer of these items, it isn’t the only player in the illegal export game.
“I recently had one buyer from Spain who bought two jaguar hats for a doctor friend back home,” Brenda said.
She added that the local prison in Trinidad, which is run by the Bolivian government, is fueling the animal trafficking industry. The prison, called Mocovi, participates in a program that forces inmates to make leather products from various animals for purchase, including illegal wild animals.
In the interview, the seller claimed the program is meant to help “rehabilitate prisoners” and prepare them to work regular jobs once released from prison.
And this is done, ironically, by forcing convicted criminals to commit another crime in the eyes of the Bolivian law.
Officials at the general directorate of the penitentiary system declined to comment when contacted by The Epoch Times.
Before the 2018 bust, Chinese traffickers were able to export small parts from jaguars, particularly the fangs, fairly easily through the country’s international airports. However, since Customs officers began cracking down on the practice, opportunistic smugglers are turning to alternate routes to move the coveted exotic animal items out of the country.
Some of these methods include moving contraband through remote border crossings into Brazil and the notorious “death corridor,” which is a desolate section of the Atacama Desert between Bolivia and Chile.
One of the biggest problems for conservationists is the sheer size of the country’s wilderness and relatively small population. Bolivia has a population density of only 26 people per square mile compared to neighboring Brazil’s 62 people per square mile.
That translates into a lack of law enforcement, especially in national parks, where many of the nation’s wild and threatened animals live and poachers operate freely.
A Dangerous Mythology
In the mountainous river town of Rurrenabaque, jaguar hunting has grown up alongside the tourist industry.Local eco-lodge operator and landowner Adela Jordan has seen the mentality of locals change over the years as China’s money and influence infiltrated the region.
“They’re predators [China]; they consume everything they see—the land, the animals, the rivers, the trees, everything,” Jordan told The Epoch Times.
She explained how cattle ranchers in the area began hunting jaguars more aggressively than just defending their livestock, once Chinese nationals expressed an interest in purchasing the cats’ teeth and other body parts.
About 20 miles down the road is the city of Reyes, where Jordan said another black market thrives and offers products made from wild animals, including jaguars.
“So many [locals] here have become poachers,” she said.
The thriving undercurrent of trafficking exists in sharp contrast to Rurrenabaque’s international claim to fame: Madidi National Park.
Crouched at the edge of one of the last stretches of pristine Amazonian wilderness, tour operators in town offer three-day to one-week deep jungle adventures and wildlife spotting tours reminiscent of African photo safaris.
Yet with Chinese criminals offering $100 to $400 per tooth for jaguar fangs, the money has proved too inviting for locals to pass up.
The mythology surrounding the purported good luck, fortune, protection, and vitality offered by jaguar teeth, which is an extension of the Chinese belief that Asian tiger parts offer the same benefits, is at the heart of the demand.
Additionally, there are well-intentioned but haphazard rescue attempts that leave many liberated animals, including jaguars, living in cages for the rest of their lives.
Jordan described one such animal refuge near the town of Rurrenabaque, which was forced to shoot a wild jaguar that entered the property and tried to attack one of the rescue center’s captive animals.
“So what was the point, if they have to shoot one of the animals they’re trying to protect?” she asked.
In 2018, China’s embassy in Bolivia issued a statement pleading for its citizens living in the South American country to respect and “strictly observe” Chinese and Bolivian laws and regulations against the illegal trafficking of wild animals.
The Bolivian Minister of the Environment didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment.
