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WILD ANIMALS:
Noble Causes and Jungle Diplomacy
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Recently, a rare endangered Siberian crane was spotted along the banks of the Irrawaddy River. The large bird dancing on the riverbank began to attract large numbers of gazers. Eventually they included the military, who proceeded to shoot the rare bird.
—U.S. Embassy Rangoon
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THE OFFICER AT THE U.S. CONSULATE IN GUANGZHOU was troubled by a British report on Independent Television Network about people buying tiger meat and drinking tiger “wine” at two Chinese wildlife preserves near Guilin (about 500 kilometers from Guangzhou, in southern China), one of which housed thirteen hundred rare tigers. He decided to make an unofficial visit. Reporting officers sometimes visit public places on their own as a means of avoiding the trappings of protocol and to get a better sense of what an average person would experience.
It was worse than he thought. On arrival, he stumbled onto a circus theater where tigers were made to perform while their human handlers whipped and struck the big cats with metal poles. Tiger cubs in a nursery eagerly greeted visitors bringing treats. The lack of fear made the animals unfit for release into the wild. The souvenir store did indeed offer tiger wine (enriched with tiger bone), ranging in price from $10 to $117, and locals assured him it was possible to purchase tiger skins with advance notice.
The officer painted a grim picture of the wildlife preserves, which seemed geared toward sleazy entertainment, with dirt tracks for camel and horse racing. The theater hawked performances by bears, including a mock marriage with cubs acting as the bride and groom. Some of the two hundred bears on the premises had small patches of hair shaved off their torsos, an indication of surgical removal of valued bear bile, an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine, as is tiger wine and tiger bone. The bile was available in the gift shop, where it sold for about $52 for 500 milliliters. The officer concluded that the so-called wildlife preserves were heavily dependent on sales of animal products produced in-house that affected the well-being of the animals they were supposed to protect.” 1
The officer belongs to a new generation of diplomats who ditch the black-tie world of receptions and limos to pull on hiking boots, hop into four-wheel drive vehicles, and head for remote regions. They tell tales of species teetering on the edge of extinction, threatened by poachers, big game hunters, and venal officials. These cables aren’t front-page foreign policy news and they won’t necessarily build careers, but they suggest an important generational shift. No one wrote about wildlife in George Kennan’s time. There are no questions on the Foreign Service exam about wildlife, and none of the profession’s core competencies, as defined by the State Department, mention a love for rare species. Few officers bring any special expertise to the topic of wildlife management, but their determination to document the plight of wildlife suggests a deep affinity for animals and an understanding of how they fit into the larger environment. These millennial diplomats, raised on Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel, reflect a very Western sense of animals’ place in the world. They care.
The volume of their reporting is astounding: WikiLeaks contains several thousand cables on wildlife, hunting, poaching, illicit trade, endangered habitat, and on specific species such as lions, apes, elephants, rhinos, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, and whales. To monitor this Noah’s Ark, the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) posts fifty officers to a dozen regional environmental hubs covering multiple countries and issues, aided by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of volunteer embassy officers keen to supplement their regular duties for something off the beaten path.2
Since the world’s most exotic animals live in some of the world’s most corrupt states, there are some disconcerting developed/developing world disconnects. Diplomats found stories so bizarre as to defy belief. They wrote about rhinos caught in the crossfire of Maoist insurgents in Nepal; rare cranes shot by Burmese military for no good reason; and start-up zoos in Thailand where cafeterias offered dishes made from the species of animals on view. They recorded Saudi fatwas against family dogs and countries shipping off scores of large animals in exchange for favorable United Nations votes.
Not all the news was so disheartening. A trip to one of Russia’s farthest corners described efforts to save the Amur leopard. A diplomatic observer at a Guangzhou park watched yuppie Chinese and their dogs, commanded in English, sporting matching outfits.
In an earlier age, if a diplomatic officer bothered to report on wildlife at all, he would have visited the relevant ministries—environment, forestry, interior—met with a few national parks officials, and called it a day. Today’s officers also stumbled onto the evolving role of international NGOs dedicated to wildlife. In some cases, these well-heeled Western-oriented groups acted in lieu of (or in spite of) national governments, contributing enormous financial resources and making decisions about wildlife without the involvement of the country’s political stakeholders. The biggest of these groups dwarf the resources of a small country. For example, the Nature Conservancy had assets of roughly $6 billion, which exceeded the GDPs of countries such as Mali, Burundi, or Niger at the time the cables were written. Top-tier NGOs rely on scores of international lawyers, scientists, environmentalists, and other highly trained staff to spend their funds efficiently, something that cannot always be said of the countries in which they work. They also lobby their home governments to raise wildlife issues at the international level and count on a steady stream of donors who share their commitment.
American diplomats saw reporting on animal welfare in all forms as part of their diplomatic mission. They began with the premise that the way a country treats its animals—in the wild, in zoos, or in private homes, is a fair barometer of its civil society. At their most optimistic, they chronicled steps nations took to recognize the importance of animals and the need to protect them. At their most pessimistic, they observed wildlife losing out to lack of money and competing human-animal interests while corrupt officials hustled endangered animals toward ever-more inevitable extinction.
“PROTECTED” WILDLIFE
Wild animals are big business. The U.S. government estimates that the illicit global trade in poached animals and their hides, tusks, and bones is worth $10 to $20 billion a year, ranking third after arms and drug trafficking.3 A leopard skin can fetch $20,000; a kilogram of rhino horn goes for more than $65,000. The effort to stop this illegal trade is one of the most challenging areas of diplomacy.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) often serves as the policy point of departure for embassy reporting on wildlife. The United States proposed the idea for what became CITES in 1973 and hosted a conference that led to the creation of what is now a 178-member organization.4 A rare example of modest international organizational success, CITES has achieved a measure of cross-border cooperation to ensure that international trade in wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. Conservationists would counter that protection of wild animals and plants has a long way to go and charge that CITES has a legacy of mixed messages and an overwillingness to grant exceptions to its rules.
CITES’ function is simple: to list and categorize some thirty thousand species on three lists, called appendices, according to their level of endangerment. The member states meet once every two to three years, against a backdrop of furious negotiations, to uplist, downlist, or even delist species to more or less restrictive appendices.
The WikiLeaks cables demonstrate mounting discord within CITES over wildlife policies in the developed and developing worlds. In general (but not always) wealthy countries work to get animals moved onto the most stringent Appendix 1; developing countries, often where the animals actually live, work to get them off Appendix 1. While this international diplomacy plays out at the meetings, the reality for CITES-protected animals illustrates the clash between officials who see wildlife as a revenue resource and those who see it as an endangered treasure. Consider the 2010 efforts of ministers from Zambia and Tanzania to secure Washington’s support for legalizing the sale of elephant products (meaning ivory) in advance of an upcoming CITES meeting.
Catherine Namugala, Zambian Minister of Tourism, Environment, and Natural Resources, was in no mood for sentimentality. “We have too many elephants!” she complained to the U.S. ambassador. “They endanger Zambians and prevent children from going to school.” She insisted that Zambia should have the right to permit “the legal, regulated killing of elephants,” which she saw, at best, as a national resource that could promote development.
The embassy was unpersuaded, commenting that Zambia’s track record on wildlife conservation was “not stellar . . . only a single rhinoceros remains in the country.” Officers noted reports of then-president Rupiah Banda and his entourage on hunting trips in the countryside feasting on Cape buffalo and rare klipspringer antelope, which they also presented as gifts to local chieftains.5
Erasmus Tarimo, director of the Wildlife Division of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute, tried a different tactic, comparing the ivory ban to failed U.S. Prohibition laws. He said the ban only increased the international price of ivory without deterring poaching, and that Tanzania was helpless against poachers because of its huge land mass, limited resources, and the limitless demand from the Asian market, not to mention international traders who corrupted Tanzanian officials. He told the U.S. ambassador that downlisting the elephant would allow Tanzania to sell its ivory stockpile while ensuring that all of the estimated $20 million in proceeds would be earmarked for antipoaching activities and benefit local communities caught up in human-elephant competition for land. Elephants need an enormous amount of land for grazing and range over a wide area. Agrarian communities that lie in elephant migratory paths can see their crops wiped out by elephant herds.
The embassy questioned whether Tanzania would really devote the entire $20 million to antipoaching efforts, especially during an election year, and doubted Tanzania would agree to third-party custodianship of proceeds from ivory sales.6
Despite their lobbying, both Zambia and Tanzania lost their bid to downlist elephants and ivory at the CITES meeting in Doha in March 2010. But the battle was far from over.
HUNTERS AND GATHERERS
In the world of diplomatic reporting, as well as wildlife conservation, not all animals are created equal. Large mammals get far more publicity than their more obscure or less appealing relatives. The popular animals confront conservationists and diplomats with moral dilemmas: Will a controlled sale of ivory reduce the slaughter of elephants? Is it ethical to auction off big game hunting licenses to increase a country’s budget for wildlife management? Should we allow the killing of a few animals in order to save a lot more?
Diplomats are sensitive to the age-old economic truth that banned products fetch high prices. By the mid 2000s, rising prosperity in Asia helped bid up sought-after wild animal products such as ivory to levels that would keep the rural families who sell them afloat for years. Yet poachers are not always rural families. There is mounting evidence that international organized crime has found a foothold in poaching and is deploying sophisticated weaponry including AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and helicopters, effectively militarizing large swathes of Africa.7 Complicating the picture even further are wealthy big game hunters collecting trophies of what they call Africa’s Big Five (elephant, lion, Cape buffalo, leopard, and rhino), who will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege—attractive revenue few African countries can overlook.
Wildlife preservation costs money. The poorest African countries are outmatched by the Western NGOs who focus their conservation efforts on them. Diplomatic cables chronicle a drama that pits animal-loving citizens of the developed world against the people who actually live with them, where hunting so-called bush meat may be a way of getting scarce protein, protecting precious crops from trampling herds, or saving villages that lie on a herd’s migratory path. Inadequacy and lack of will from national governments to protect their resources further stokes the conflict.
Case in Point: Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is beset by overabundance and scarcity. It is home to one hundred thousand elephants on land meant to support fewer than half that number, and a population of rhinos whose numbers have dwindled to fewer than three hundred. The so-called elephant overabundance creates opportunities and problems in terms of culling, poaching, and income-generating hunting safaris, while the severe rhino scarcity illustrates the basic law of supply and demand. As sought-after rhino horns become ever scarcer, the rising price makes the risk of obtaining one more attractive to poachers, who sell them to Asian markets where they are valued in traditional medicine.
Zimbabwe, a southern African country slightly larger than the state of Montana, offers a case study in how inseparable wildlife problems are from a country’s political, economic, and social problems. U.S. embassy officers, in cable after cable, pounded home the point that the country’s chaotic policies governing land usage have so damaged its ecology that Zimbabwe might never again sustain large numbers of wild animals.
Land use policies had over time displaced both people and wildlife. Until 1979, about 70 percent of the country’s most fertile land had been owned by fewer than 5 percent of the population—farmers of European origin. Aside from the obvious social inequities, the large plantation-style farms produced foreign exchange–earning export crops and also allowed wild animals to roam on land lying fallow.
Robert Mugabe, who came to power in 1987, made land reform a hallmark of his three-decade tenure. What started as a reasonable land redistribution scheme founded on the premise of willing sellers and buyers changed in 2000 to an aggressive fast-track land reform. With government sanction, war veterans and the rural poor invaded and occupied farms, resulting in the displacement of landowners (some of whom were American) and a full-scale land management disaster. By 2002, the embassy was reporting that Zimbabwe had gone from being the breadbasket of Africa to a country in which nearly half the population was malnourished.8
Year by year, the embassy determinedly chronicled an unintended consequence of the land invasions: rampant poaching by both commercial and subsistence hunters who took game illegally from occupied private reserves, conservancies, national parks, and occupied farms that bordered protected game areas. The results were devastating. Some conservancies lost 60 percent of their animals. One source reported six to ten elephants were being killed every month; the rhino death toll in a nine-month period stood at thirty-eight. A major wildlife conservancy reported that 718 animals of a wide variety of species had been killed by land occupiers and poachers. Apart from its irreplaceable wildlife, Zimbabwe was also losing legal hunting revenue of more than $40 million a year.9
The embassy reported that poachers, if caught, were rarely convicted, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. They sold smaller animals as bush meat but also were part of well-organized networks smuggling high-value ivory, tusks, horns, and hides to export markets in China and Europe. Zebra hides, for example, were destined for German furniture markets. And once poaching networks forced open the gates to national parks, rural villagers soon followed.
National park boundaries are no longer respected by rural dwellers, be it for grazing, firewood collection or hunting. Poaching has led to widespread destruction of habitat, mainly deforestation, but also riparian damage caused by illegal gold mining and unmanaged poor farming practices. Ongoing power cuts have led more families to rely on burning wood for heating and cooking. Deforestation is evident in satellite photos and increases vulnerability to erosion and flooding.10
Calling Zimbabwe a dystopia, one diplomat described land occupations in which chaos reigned and productivity had fallen to zero. In one field, an estimated $80,000 in crops rotted in full sight of people claiming to be land-hungry farmers. “Two giraffe calves, fit for neither sport nor table, were killed—one left to rot next to the farmer’s driveway, the other cut up for meat to feed the poacher’s hunting dogs.” 11
Rhinos and the Big Game Hunters
With the triple threat of habitat loss, Asian demand for its horn, and big game hunters seeking a Big Five trophy, it’s a miracle that there are any rhinos left. The rare African black rhino’s numbers, estimated by the Rhino Resource Center at 70,000 in the late 1960s, had fallen to 2,300 by 1992, despite having been listed on CITES “critically endangered” Appendix 1 since 1977. Ensuring the survival of those rhinos that remain illustrates the dilemma posed by sport hunting. The conflicting positions of CITES, the Namibian government, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NGOs dedicated to wildlife protection, and wealthy U.S. and European hunters beautifully captures the perverse notion that it makes sense to kill animals in order to save them.
Big game hunting was once the sport of kings, and today it takes a king’s ransom to hunt large game. Both South Africa and Namibia were able to convince CITES to allow small quotas of five rhinos per country for sport hunters. But the quotas are of little value unless the hunters can claim and export their trophies. Namibia had long wanted to expand its hunting tourism industry, and the minister of environment and tourism complained to the ambassador that a U.S. ban on imports of black rhino trophies was hampering revenue.12
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has the authority to issue import permits for sport-hunted trophies, but since the black rhino is also protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act, Americans cannot bring their trophies home. Ironically, the meeting between the Namibian minister and ambassador occurred because the embassy was pushing for long-awaited export permits for fourteen cheetahs destined for the Smithsonian National Zoo, Cheetah Conservation Fund, and White Oak Conservation Center. The minister introduced a not-too-subtle quid pro quo: lift the ban on black rhino trophies and then we can talk about cheetahs.
The invisible figure behind this conversation was Colorado-based David K. Reinke, who paid $215,000 to hunt a black rhino in Namibia in 2009, a sum that included a $175,000 fee to the Namibian Game Product Trust Fund.13 His lawyer argued that he had the right to bring his rhino trophy home, and for the first time in more than thirty years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally relented, issuing him a one-time permit for the import of his black rhino trophy in March 2013. Having allowed the unthinkable, Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe then appeared weeks later on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow to warn about buying and selling antique rhino horns.
“We want to get the message out on protections for wildlife,” he said. “Anything that creates a demand for products made from endangered species can be bad news for survival of the animal in the wild, and that’s exactly what’s happening to rhinos.” 14
If Ashe missed this apparent double standard, there were plenty of conservationists who did not. The president of the U.S. Humane Society called the decision to allow Reinke to bring home his hunting trophy “more than ridiculous,” and the regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare called it “perverse, to say the least.” The outrage continued as Namibia, working with the Dallas Safari Club, an American outlet whose website bills itself as “the greatest hunter’s convention on the planet,” auctioned off permits for big game hunts from which it said the proceeds would be used for wildlife preservation.15 The winning bid for the black rhino permit was $350,000 at a January 2014 auction. According to the Dallas Morning News, the Texan who posted the winning bid shot the black rhino in Namibia in May 2015. The 2015 auction featured a chance to kill an African elephant, which the group canceled in the face of protests from numerous wildlife welfare organizations. However, it still included a hunt in Mozambique for a male leopard.
Zimbabwe is also home to a few rhinos—emphasis on few. On the theory that eliminating the horns would deter poachers, in the mid 1990s conservationists had implemented a massive dehorning campaign, but the animals’ horns grew back over three years’ time. Small-scale farmers also killed rhinos to defend their crops, using pesticide-laced melons. By 2008, nearly a quarter of all rhinos in Zimbabwe had been killed off, according to a CITES-funded study cited by the embassy, which estimated that 235 rhinos (both black and white) were killed in Zimbabwe between 2006 and 2009.16 Conservationists told the embassy that Zimbabwe’s rhinos were on a path to extinction.
As in Namibia, the greatest hope for Zimbabwe’s rhinos seemed to be from organized big game hunting with revenue from hunters—including Americans—funding a substantial part of the park service budget. That kind of hunting requires sophisticated operations, and the embassy intensively followed the fortunes of Save Valley Conservancy (SVC), Africa’s largest private wildlife sanctuary, which also held the largest population of black rhinos in Zimbabwe. This unique consortium of two dozen landowners (including Americans and Europeans) pooled their resources to stock the conservancy with elephants, giraffes, black and white rhinos, and other big game. While SVC began as a photographic-only safari, the conservancy found it needed the income from big game hunting to survive.
The embassy had written admiringly of SVC’s model of sustainable conservation tourism but by 2009 was warning of SVC’s imminent demise.17 Despite generating revenue for the government, employing forty people full time, and setting up community programs to channel earnings into five neighboring rural districts, SVC endured politically forced partnerships with Mugabe cronies, part of a pattern of dispossessing longtime landowners and rewarding Mugabe supporters. Reports told of unrestrained and irresponsible hunting by the Mugabe set, and the embassy warned, “Wildlife stands to lose.” 18
A continent away, Indian rhinos were at the center of a bizarre example of human-animal interaction when they got caught in a shoot-out between the Nepalese army and a Maoist insurgency. The embassy described a dramatic skirmish near Chitwan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in south-central Nepal, that broke out as ten rhinos were being relocated under the watchful eyes of the diplomatic corps, which had been invited to this unusual nature outing. The relocation, sponsored by the Nepalese government, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), was proceeding according to plan when shooting broke out. The insurgents killed two soldiers and forced four trucks carrying rhinos off the road.19
Although no rhinos died in the incident, the embassy noted that the insurgents’ violent takeover of wildlife preserves was imperiling Nepal’s wildlife. As park rangers fled their posts to avoid the fighting, rampant poaching resulted. Officers wrote that the Maoist insurgent activities placed wildlife “under siege,” and that poachers had earlier killed thirty-eight rhinos, along with countless endangered species such as musk deer, snow leopards, and Bengal tigers.20
Elephants
Perhaps no animal is more beloved and more controversial than the elephant, targeted by poachers and hunters for its ivory; targeted by farmers and villagers for its tendency to trample crops and farmland; and seemingly capable of rebounding from worrisome low numbers to gigantic herds in need of ever-vaster acreage. Embassies ranging from Zimbabwe to Burma chronicled the struggle over elephants among countries, conservationists, and poachers.
CITES has banned the sale of ivory since 1989, but under pressure from conservationists, African nations, and China, it allowed a one-time sale in 2008 of stockpiled African ivory, with proceeds to be earmarked for wildlife conservation. According to conservationists, the sale of some one hundred tons of ivory proved disastrous because such a limited offering merely stoked Chinese demand and opened the floodgates of illegal ivory from African nations.21
Ivory is only one aspect of the problem. In Asia, where wild elephants number 25,000 to 35,000, they are also seen as traditional and ideal beasts of burden. India has 20,000, followed by Burma, where the embassy reported that their numbers in the wild dwindled from 5,500 in 1996 to 4,000 in 2009. Elephants in Burma are used in the timber industry as draft animals, and conservationists complain that abuse and overwork result in high mortality, while the logging also destroys elephant habitat.22
The Burma state timber company owns 2,500 elephants, and an additional 2,000 are privately owned and rented out to the timber industry. A Burmese wildlife NGO official told the embassy that as the regime uses the timber industry to meet the increasing demand for hard currency—essential for its economic integration and development—there is constant pressure to capture additional wild elephants and use them to fell more trees. Burmese officials defend the practice, saying elephants are more environmentally friendly than heavy machinery. That’s one view, but if the combined elephant abuse and loss of trees does not dismay conservationists, there is also the proximity of Burma’s border to China with its high demand for ivory.
Sometimes the greatest threat to elephants comes from climate change. Mali’s Gourma region, straddling the area between the country’s fertile southern savannah and the semi-arid Sahel, somehow supports the northernmost herd of elephants in West Africa and the only elephant group in the Sahel. The survival of the 550 to 700 Gourma elephants hinges on a nomadic migration circuit of six hundred kilometers—the longest annual migration of elephants ever recorded, according to embassy reports.23 The elephants follow a vast, counterclockwise route punctuated with watering holes and seasonal grasslands, but after centuries of elephant-human harmony, recent trends of reduced rainfall alongside more farms, livestock, and settlements have meant heavier competition for scarce water. Embassy officers reported that NGO groups had used satellite technology and radio collars to identify choke points on the migration corridors, reasoning that any negative human-elephant interaction could increase the already high mortality rate. The NGOs worked alongside the World Bank on a $10 million biodiversity project that relied on local knowledge, leadership, and commitment of the Gourma population, working with tribal chiefs from eighteen communes.
The officers described the difficulties of the collaring expeditions. One older and weaker elephant died from the anesthesia. Three baby elephants died while trapped in a mud hole, despite efforts by rescuers who were only able to help an adult female accompanying the babies. The adult became enraged and injured a worker. Another NGO team barely avoided disaster when the engine of their spotting plane failed, forcing the pilot to glide to safety on a donkey path.24
Great Apes
Fewer than three hundred gorillas survive in the border region between the West African countries Nigeria and Cameroon. Ensuring their survival and protecting this important wildlife corridor has involved at least four U.S. government agencies and several wildlife NGOs—and notably not the Nigerian government.
On a visit to assess local conservation projects to help the critically endangered Cross River gorilla, diplomats and NGO officials learned that a USAID-funded program employing nine “eco-guards” to conduct patrols and collect data on the gorillas was not working. They immediately decided to help the local group seek more funds from a variety of U.S. sources ranging from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Africa Command Biodiversity Fund to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the U.S. Great Apes Conservation Fund, which dispensed more than $17 million in U.S. government grants in 2011.25
The gorillas’ habitat in Cross River State lies in the southeasternmost corner of Nigeria, abutting Cameroon. Cross River governor Donald Duke sadly admitted that his countrymen “do not consider the Cross River Gorilla a national treasure,” a fact born out when locals killed three gorillas for raiding crops after severe storms wiped out the animals’ usual vegetation source.26 The governor’s solution was to habituate gorillas to humans’ presence as a means of boosting tourism, an idea that embassy reporters said alarmed conservationists. Another embassy report underscored this divide. “Most (Nigerian) states see the wildlife reserves primarily as a source of income and do very little to advance conservation,” with the predictable result being deteriorating wildlife habitat, increased poaching, and illegal trafficking.27
Across the river in Cameroon, the gorillas are losing their habitat to the Lom Pangur dam project. The embassy warned that the need for electrical capacity so far outscaled the need for conservation that the Cameroon government pushed aside environmentally stringent World Bank funding to pursue alternative assistance from European, French, and Chinese sources, all of which would impose looser environmental conditions, and none of which stipulated conservation measures for the gorillas’ habitat.28
The Big Cats
U.S. diplomats in India give Gujarat, India’s westernmost state, high marks for wildlife conservation. The grade may stem in part from the fact that 80 percent of the population is vegetarian. The officers wrote approvingly that “a combination of strong political will, education, and culture has put Gujarat at the forefront of cutting edge wildlife conservation in India.” 29 Gujarat’s Gir National Park shelters three hundred and fifty of the world’s last remaining wild Asiatic lions. But even in this enlightened spot, lions come under threat from poachers, who killed eight in an attempt to pass off lion bone, for which there is no market, as highly prized tiger bone, an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. But unlike the lax enforcement seen elsewhere, the perpetrators were prosecuted and given three-year sentences. The state also hired one hundred new forest guards and an additional fifty supervisors, while installing high-tech monitoring equipment and a centralized control room.
Gujarat lies nearly seven hundred kilometers northwest of Mumbai, where the United States maintains a consulate headed by the consul general, who made a visit to Gir National Park to learn firsthand about how well conservation measures were working. The Gujarat park director proudly spoke about what he called a culture of conservation. Officials conduct more than a hundred public awareness workshops each year, and local NGOs promote greater understanding of the lion’s role in India’s ecosystem. Should a lion kill a villager’s livestock, the park director said, “he considers it an offering.” Consular officials noted that the forestry department quickly pays compensation to reduce the chance of villager retribution. Although the lions live in close proximity to villages and settlements along the park’s perimeter, the director said violent incidents are rare, with a human death occurring once every three to four years.30
What could go wrong? The consul’s report said human-animal competition led to the creation of nine thousand open irrigation wells ten feet wide and one hundred feet deep, with no rails, boundaries, or markings. The wells would be dangerous to any species (including humans) walking near one at night, and there were some fifty incidents of lions drowning. As a result, the forestry department raised funds to fence in two thousand of these wells.
Inbreeding presented an even more serious threat to Gujarat’s lions. One solution would split the population and move at least half to a neighboring state. Gujarat officials vehemently opposed the plan, citing the likelihood of poachers in neighboring states. The Indian government spent $6.4 million preparing for the relocation, but Gujarat state officials dug in. Local Indian NGOs filed litigation on behalf of the lions, and the case went to India’s Supreme Court. The court subsequently ruled that the Gujarat government must relocate some of the lions to neighboring state Madhya Pradesh’s Kuno-Palpur sanctuary.31 But in March 2015, Gujarat officials were using other legal arguments to fight the Supreme Court ruling, and the fate of the lions was still undecided.
The year 2010 was the Year of the Tiger, and with a wild population of only thirty-two hundred animals, thirteen tiger-range states convened a series of meetings of the World Bank’s Global Tiger Initiative (GTI), a partnership with the Smithsonian, the International Tiger Coalition (a consortium of thirty-nine NGOs), and both the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network (SA-WEN) and the U.S.-supported Association of Southeast Asian Nations Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN). The amount of American diplomatic activity, reporting, and above all funding of these initiatives is all the more remarkable since there are no wild tigers in North America (although there are many in captivity). Adding to the challenge is that some of the thirteen countries in which tigers range—including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam—have spotty records on tiger conservation efforts.
Embassy officers in Nepal had warned in 2009 that although momentum was building for the GTI through a workshop designed to foster regional cooperation, consensus, and antitrafficking efforts, the momentum alone “will not save the tiger without concrete actions on the ground.” 32 And indeed, a follow-on GTI meeting in November 2009 of more than two hundred tiger experts from governments and NGOs ended in a series of sensible recommendations, but not before China proposed legalized trade in tiger parts, a move rejected by all the other states. As described early in the chapter, China allows tiger farming, a controversial practice tiger experts reject as a means of legalizing the sale of products such as pelts and parts, “providing an unacceptable incentive to consumer demand that would give motivation to kill the few tigers remaining in the wild.” 33 And at the GTI ministerial, it was China that, consistent with its previous position, lodged reservations on the final declaration’s separate trade section that banned trade in tigers and tiger parts.34
Sometimes tigers clash with other critically endangered species, a factor the U.S. consulate in Vladivostok, located at the crossroads of western Russia, China, and North Korea, noted in its all-out reporting efforts on behalf of the Amur leopard, the world’s rarest big cat. Some thirty-five remained in the wild when the cables were written in 2008; today, according to WWF, their total has almost doubled. The Amur tiger, also endangered, threatens the much smaller leopard. Tiger-on-leopard attacks have increased because of reductions in their hunting habitat, which has pushed tigers into the leopards’ range. The exacerbating factor is the deforestation of trees producing pine nuts, a staple for wild boar, which is the foundation of both the leopard and tiger diet. Much of the pine is illegally harvested and exported to China, ultimately winding up in furniture for various U.S. chains.35
Reporting officers had continual contact with the WWF and a host of Vladivostok-based NGOs. They noted that none of the workers had ever seen a leopard in the wild (all the leopard film footage is captured by hidden cameras). The consulate remained heavily engaged, organizing films and lectures, chronicling joint efforts of U.S. and Russian scientists to use radio tracking collars, and bringing in a big cat expert from the National Institutes of Health to examine the genetic makeup of the remaining leopards. Heart murmurs and reproductive problems pointed to inbreeding concerns.36
Consulate staff wrote about hiking through leopard territory on WWF-leased forest in Barabash, across Amurskiy Bay and inland from Vladivostok, and warned that a planned six-lane highway would cut through the leopard’s remaining habitat. Officers said local conservationists were skeptical of the construction company’s promise to build tunnels for the leopards, citing the Russian proverb, “Promises don’t mean there will be a wedding.”
A year later, the consul general reported that the forest mafia, which had taken enormous illegal harvests of cedar and other rare species, had torched the houses of two WWF workers and had declared war on anyone working to protect forests and enforce environmental laws.37 The illegal logging industry of Russia’s far east is run by criminal gangs, sometimes called forest mafia. They filled a vacuum after the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of state-supported forest industries, which led to widespread unemployment. Taking advantage of the sparse population and even sparser law enforcement presence, they chop down hardwood species of ash, maple, and oak, destroying habitat for critically endangered species.
This remarkable series of reports on the prospects for the Amur tiger and leopard shows both the reach and the limitations of diplomatic reporting. The consulate wrote passionately about wildlife and detailed the work of NGOs, but at the end of the day, the Russian government has to take action.
Birding Mania
Many species of birds are endangered, and embassies found opportunities to report on migratory and exotic birds, ranging from the parrots of the Amazon to the cranes of Burma. Even in war-wracked Somalia, an officer took time to note the mysterious death of fifty Croatian-tagged white storks in a local village. The storks, native to a village about sixty-four kilometers southeast of Zagreb, were noteworthy, the officer insisted, because they had been tagged and sampled for avian influenza testing at Croatia’s Poultry Center Lab with negative results. Storks from Croatia usually migrate to South Africa on a route through Egypt and Sudan, and experts were puzzled as to why they should have flown far off course to Somalia. The local residents in Elbaraf notified vets after they saw the exotic birds unable to fly and walking with difficulty. By the time veterinarians arrived in the village, the carcasses had been piled up and were too decomposed to test. With obvious consternation, the officer reported that the cause of death would remain a mystery.38
Diplomats are trained to be nonjudgmental, but sometimes their outrage shows through. One officer visited Kachin State in Burma, which sits on a major migratory bird flight path and attracts bird-watchers from around the world. “Recently, a rare endangered Siberian crane was spotted along the banks of the Irrawaddy River. The large bird dancing on the riverbank began to attract large numbers of gazers. Eventually they included the military, who proceeded to shoot the rare bird.” 39
Defending avian wildlife can be a dangerous business. Brazil’s Tinguá Natural Reserve in Nova Iguaçu was the scene of the 2005 murder of a celebrated naturalist who spent fifteen years of his life defending the reserve from illegal trade. The suspect, allegedly hired by a group of poachers, animal traders, and corrupt environmental officials, was a hunter who grew up in the area and sold tropical birds and other animals to local restaurants. The challenge of patrolling Brazil’s vast wildlife regions is overwhelming, with one inspector for every ninety-one thousand acres of protected land. Home to dozens of rare and endangered species, wildlife trafficking in birds has reached a critical state. The consulate estimated Brazil accounted for about 10 percent of the world’s illegal trade in wild animals, of which nearly half—mostly parrots and other birds—went to Europe and the U.S.40
Parrots are also native to Africa. The Cameroon minister for Forests and Wildlife said he was trying to improve governance in the corruption-riddled forestry and wildlife sectors and told the U.S. ambassador that police had intercepted one thousand parrots being smuggled out of Douala.41 The situation for birds in neighboring Nigeria is even grimmer. Wildlife officials told the embassy that the Hajj- and Umrah-chartered flights for religious pilgrimages were convenient conduits for trafficking in wildlife, particularly parrots. Trafficking overland is also rampant, and smugglers use empty fuel tankers to export live birds, as well as hides, skins, and ivory.42
THE EATERS
While the wildlife preservation movement mainly targets the illegal market in ivory for decorative or medicinal uses, a considerable proportion of poaching is for food. In most of the world, meat of any kind is a luxury, and the most exotic sources are in high demand. The U.S. embassy in Hanoi summed up the problem in a cable titled “We Eat Everything on Four Legs Except the Table.” Writers documented Vietnam’s voracious consumption of wild animals and concluded that cravings for wild meat trumped wildlife concerns. According to the embassy, demand increased as Vietnamese got wealthier, and most failed to see any link between wild animal products and diseases, despite outbreaks of avian flu and SARS. Forest rangers were shot in the line of duty, and official impunity compounded the problem. A high-level Vietnamese official and war hero was allowed to keep nineteen tigers smuggled in from Cambodia despite the clear violation of CITES regulations. Vietnam is also a transshipment point for animals brought into China by wildlife smuggling networks that the embassy believes are well organized and linked to cross-border drug and counterfeit trading.
Vietnam is home to 10 percent of the world’s species, several of which are only found in Vietnam. The embassy related the usual story: the government lacks will and the people lack awareness. NGOs estimate three thousand tons of edible wildlife are traded every year for $67 million. Delicacies, including Malayan sun bears, pangolins, turtles, snakes, lizards, macaques, langurs, leopards, tigers, porcupines, wild pigs, civets, and birds are among the many exotic and endangered animals bound for Vietnamese tables. Nearly half of Hanoi residents consume wild animals, a custom the embassy cynically called Vietnam’s version of PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals.43
Vietnamese wild game restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City also serve bear products, and the consulate reported that the capital lacks the will to eradicate illegal bear farms “against the backdrop of widespread lack of appreciation for, or commitment to, the protection of wildlife in Vietnam.” The officers wrote that bear bile extracted from the gallbladders and paws remains highly prized in Vietnam as an aphrodisiac and health tonic. According to the NGO Animals Asia Foundation, three thousand to four thousand bears are caged throughout Vietnam, often in wretched conditions.44
ZOOS
Since the dawn of diplomacy, countries have been giving each other exotic animals as gifts. Over time, zoos replaced royal menageries, and common people gazed at exotic animals brought from distant corners of the empire as a symbol of a nation’s imperialism.45 Perhaps no zoo animal is more iconic than the panda, which came to symbolize China and its efforts to emerge through “panda diplomacy” from decades of isolation. The Chinese have successfully managed to “own” pandas, retaining exclusive rights in a way that no other country has managed with any other animal. To meet incessant demand (and take advantage of a lucrative export), China has developed panda breeding centers and worked to master the difficult feat of reproduction of pandas in captivity. The U.S. consulate in Chengdu was surprised by the high survival rate of the Ya’an Panda Breeding Center’s panda twins. All twins born in 2009 survived as the staff became adept at switching them back and forth so the mother would feed both of them. The cable noted that offspring born to pandas lent to foreign zoos also belong to China under the terms of the standard panda agreement.46
Embassy officers see zoos as a barometer of a country’s humanitarian values and civility. The plight of zoo animals in war-torn or impoverished countries is not difficult to imagine. The 2009 inauguration of President Obama sparked a photo contest in Albania called “A Day of Change,” which one photographer marked by taking photos at the zoo. “No one needs greater change in Tirana than these poor animals living in this decrepit zoo,” he declared.47
For entirely different reasons, the Baghdad Zoo, one of the largest in the Middle East, became an early symbol of poor planning when many animals died in the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. A few years later, embassy officers were surprised to discover that the local zoo had become the most popular destination for family outings in postwar Baghdad. Attendance doubled between 2006 and 2008 along with revenues, allowing the zoo to hire one hundred workers and fourteen veterinarians. The embassy noted special features unique to Baghdad, including the daily slaughter of two donkeys to feed the lions, and exotic fish with the image of the old Iraqi flag etched permanently into their scales. With the old flag outlawed, zoo officials were uncertain whether they would subject the fish to laser surgery to remove the illegal version.
Another big draw are the exotic animals formerly possessed by Saddam Hussein and his family, including his son Uday’s cheetah, now tame enough for petting, and the growing pride begun by two of Saddam’s lions. The zoo also exhibits some “disheveled looking brown bears, reportedly plied with arak” (an alcoholic beverage), and Saddam’s former stallion, billed as “the most famous horse in Iraq.” The embassy suspected the zoo’s large public garden and proximity to the relatively safe international zone, commonly called the Green Zone and filled with international organizations, embassies, and the security forces to protect all of them, might have been partially responsible for its popularity.48
A newer and far more troubled zoo was Chiang Mai’s Night Safari, a pet project of deposed Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who built it in his native city after seeing a similar zoo in Singapore. The embassy and consulate sent Washington five cables between 2005 and 2008 dissecting the development as a litmus test for animal rights, environmental protection, and political corruption.
The Night Safari story is a comedy of errors in which each unwise action is compounded. To begin with, the government imported 175 nonnative large animals from Kenya, ostensibly as a gift, or, as the cables darkly suggest, as pawns in exchange for Thai votes backing Kenya’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Wildlife NGOs predicted a high mortality rate during a mass move of such a great distance. Upon arrival, the animals were confronted with cages that were too small, inadequate sunlight, and insufficient roaming space.49
Night Safari also planned to bring in rare species of white rhino, leopards, and spotted hyenas, all of which are protected under CITES. Its website advertises a Safari Zone with nonnative animals, including white rhinos, hyenas, lions, cheetahs, wildebeests, giraffes, ostriches, zebras, water buffalos, kangaroos, dingos, and emus; and a Predator Prowl Zone populated with tigers, lions, African hunting dogs, vultures, wolves, white tigers, Canadian wolves, Asiatic black bears, and crocodiles. Somewhat disconcertingly, the website reassures guests: “Don’t worry, all the nasty animals are well fenced in.” 50
All this was merely backdrop to the jaw-dropping suggestion of Night Safari’s director to serve dishes made with exotic animals in one of the zoo’s restaurants. The director planned to offer set meals of zebra, lion, and crocodile, prepared by prominent chefs, for $112 dollars a plate. Digging in, he insisted that the animals on the menu were not endangered species, a fact that did little to pacify animal lovers. Even local monks objected, and the director was forced to concede. Only locally raised crocodile and ostrich would be served. The embassy noted the dining plan was particularly appalling given Thailand’s bid to be a leader in regional wildlife conservation. At the time, it was about to host the launch of the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (WEN), which aims to reduced illegal wildlife trafficking.51
Six months later, Night Safari was in trouble again. The U.S. consulate in Chiang Mai reported that an alliance of NGOs had filed a case in the Supreme Administrative Court, accusing the government-appointed tourism administration of “illegally encroaching on the Suthep-Pui National Park” to create Night Safari. The cable stated that the Love Chiang Mai Alliance “charged that Thaksin’s ideas for tourism development are poorly conceived, environmentally harmful, not transparent and lacking in community input.” Although the park is still up and running, which means that the NGOs lost, it is significant that an alliance of NGOs actually tried to take the government to court in the first place.
Public relations disasters multiplied. An escaped (nonnative) wolf prowled the area, eating villagers’ chickens. Then Night Safari road construction was blamed for flooding. Finally, Thaksin’s plans for a large elephant park with tourist lodgings put him at odds not only with villagers but with the military, given that a road for the park would go through a Thai army training area.52
Thaksin’s cavalier approach to wildlife earned him more opprobrium when he focused on orangutans. Perhaps no single species of zoo animal faces a more precarious existence, even though they enjoy full protection under CITES, which bans their trade. Originally native to Indonesia and Malaysia, they are now found only in the wild in remoter parts of Borneo and Sumatra. Embassy Bangkok officers recounted “Orangutan Odysseys,” which painstakingly detailed the trek and ultimate fate of a now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t group of fifty-seven illegally trafficked orangutans through Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia.
Thai animal parks—this time Safari World in Bangkok—played a prominent role in the scheme. The story began when Thai authorities took custody of fifty-seven orangutans from Safari World. The owner first insisted the orangutans were offspring of parents acquired before Thailand’s accession to CITES back in 1994. He later changed his story to say they had been given to Safari World by pet owners who no longer wanted to keep them and that Safari World was “performing a public service.” Ultimately, he admitted to having obtained the animals illegally.
Custody passed to the Thai Department of National Parks until officials repatriated the animals—forty-eight of them at least—to Indonesia at some considerable cost, requiring the use of an Indonesian Air Force C-130 and eight veterinarians. The orangutans were welcomed by Indonesia’s first lady and several ministers. But five of the fifty-seven original orangutans were not repatriated because they were on loan to perform at—where else?—the Chiang Mai Night Safari. Under mounting pressure, the five “performing” orangutans were relocated to a Thai wildlife preserve as they awaited relocation to Indonesia. According to the embassy, which was tenacious in following the story, “The Director [of the Department of National Parks] expressed incredulity, as well as irritation, at the U.S. government’s interest in the matter.” 53
Yet another orangutan odyssey began when a European couple vacationing in Vietnam noticed two young orangutans in their hotel’s private zoo. They called an animal protection hotline run by a local NGO. Vietnamese government officials raided the hotel, confiscated the orangutans, and notified Indonesia, where they believed the orangutans had originated. The animals were flown to Jakarta, where they were to spend a thirty-three-day quarantine in a local zoo. Four months later they were still at the zoo, which advertised “entertaining and educational animal shows highlighting orangutans and other animals.”
In neighboring Cambodia, a local version of Safari World paid $57,000 in fines for illegally importing thirty-six orangutans from Thailand. Despite the fine, the zoo owner was able to keep the animals. Zoo patrons paid to see them perform in kick-boxing, skateboarding, and bicycle-riding skits. Officials suspected the orangutans came from Safari World in Bangkok. “As evidence, they cited the fact that Thai police first raided Bangkok’s Safari World and found 110 orangutans. In a subsequent raid they found only 69. Safari officials claimed 41 apes had died and their bodies had been cremated. Wildlife smugglers seldom go to court and rarely go to jail,” the cable ruefully noted.
THERE’S A FATWA ON YOUR DOG
Perhaps nothing illustrates the cultural division between American diplomats and the world they report from more than the concept of pets. Most foreign service officers grow up in middle-class families and share a common experience of Fido or Fluffy. Implicit in the Western idea of pets is the availability of pet food, veterinary care, and a market for pet care accessories. In this vision, socially conscious people adopt their pets from no-kill shelters, and all responsible pet owners have their animals spayed or neutered. For some diplomats, it comes as a shock to work in countries where pets are an unheard-of luxury, where there may be religious or governmental bans on them, or where they find themselves on someone’s dinner table. In the developing world, strays lead violent and disease-ridden lives. Diplomats argued in reporting cables that tolerance of pets and transparency about regulations is a fair barometer of a country’s economic rise and a test of its civic engagement. Having the family dog confiscated by Beijing police is heartbreaking, as is waking up in Riyadh to find there is a religious fatwa against him.
Pets require care, and one major obstacle to keeping one is that not all countries embrace the concept of private veterinary services. In formerly communist and agriculturally oriented Turkmenistan, a private veterinarian is unheard of. State Veterinary Service is responsible for all animal care in the country, maintaining healthy livestock, preventing the spread of contagious diseases, and certifying the quality of meat. But the underfunded service has difficulty caring for the country’s farm animals, let alone pets. Many vets are more than willing to work independently (off the books), but without private clinics they have no equipment or access to medicines. Simple surgeries are performed in the pet’s home.54
Dogs in Moscow have long been caught in the country’s transition away from communism. On the negative end Moscow is home to some forty thousand stray dogs, described as fixtures outside almost every metro station. Strays suffer from inhumane treatment, and roaming packs of dogs are a common sight. But the embassy cited new hope for strays, thanks to an NGO that set up a stray cat and dog clinic, the opening of which drew eighty guests, including veterinarians, journalists, and government officials. The reporting officer said Muscovites have always been dog lovers, noting wryly, “The smaller the apartment, the larger the dog.” The growing number of pet owners in the city reflects a growing middle class, while the new clinic reflects “the ongoing importance of [the NGOs’] civic education and community outreach efforts.” 55
A pet’s experience in China, another country with a rapidly growing middle class, is proportionate to its size. Unsurprisingly, a country known until recently for its one-child policy also has a one-pet policy. The U.S. embassy in Beijing reported outrage over new rules in 2006 limiting households to one dog and outlawing “big and dangerous breeds.” The crackdown touched off street demonstrations and led to eighteen arrests and heated exchanges in Internet chat rooms. One source told the embassy that the controversial dog policy reflects “the poor state of China’s civil society. The lack of transparency surrounding regulations affecting people’s lives provokes suspicion and frustration.”
The rules caused headaches for police as well, who had to house confiscated dogs in precinct basements. The embassy saw the policy as symptomatic of press freedom limitations, noting that reporters are not allowed to criticize the policy, compare the policy to that of other countries, or write about the harmonious shared existence of people and animals.
“The controversy reflects the underdevelopment of China’s civil society. No one knows the origin of Beijing’s new directive, leaving ample space for rumors and speculation. Middle class families pay fines (or bribes) to keep their dogs. The directive includes a hotline so the public can call in to report scofflaws. Official encouragement to inform on others is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution.” 56
The situation in Guangzhou was much the same, according to the consulate, and police cracked down on violators by conducting house-to-house searches, confiscating unregistered pets from parks and veterinary clinics, and ultimately killing some fourteen thousand dogs. Despite the grim figures, the consulate noted that pet ownership is on the rise, with 7 percent of Chinese households caring for a pet, and sales of dog and cat food up 13 percent year on year.
Owners seemed keen to display their dogs. Consulate officers walking through parks at Er Sha Island and Shenzhen saw dog social club meetings with breeds ranging from golden retrievers, English sheepdogs, King Charles spaniels, and Pekinese—with their yuppie owners. “Many of the dogs sported doggie outfits and one of them was even dressed to match its owner. An organizer soon arrived, checked off names from a list, and handed out matching yellow hats. Soon after, dogs and owners departed on buses for an outing. Asked why he was speaking English to his dog, one owner replied that naturally, dogs understood English.”
The consulate noted that dogs have come a long way from a few decades ago, when pets were seen as a bourgeois decadence. Throughout the late 1970s, regular dog extermination programs were carried out; dogs were seen as a threat to public hygiene and possible carriers of SARS (although they were also served in restaurants as a delicacy). In a telling comment on Chinese society, the writer editorialized that as more Chinese raise dogs, they might also come to care more about their fellow citizens. “In the best case scenario, today’s pet owners will come to see their neighbors as worthy of at least the same care and attention as Fido, and thus their concern of their own species may increase as well.” 57
Dogs face a different problem in some Muslim countries, where there is debate over whether they are unclean. Two Saudi governors—one in Riyadh and another in Makkah—both decided to ban sales of cats and dogs and prohibit walking them in public places, following fatwas from religious police, known by their initials as CPVPV.
Embassy diplomats were fascinated by the risky debate that followed these rulings and duly reported conversations with many Saudis who saw the decision as an example of “religious police run amuk.” English-language press had a field day: “Cats, Dogs, the new threat to morality,” and “once again the CPVPV misses its goals.” Arabic-language websites joined in: “We live in a strange racist society, even against pets.” Some noted the likely inequality of enforcement: “What about the dogs and cats of their royal highnesses?” And still others thought the triviality was telling: “Aren’t there more important matters to issue fatwas on than selling dogs and cats? The CPVPV is even interfering in dogs and cats. Goodness!” 58
One embassy diplomat provided a thoughtful analysis of the relationship between pets and Islam, arguing that rules on pets create a paradox within Saudi culture: institutionalized interpretations of the Qur’an and conservatism have collided with exposure to Western ideas and progressive thinking. Past experience with similar bans suggests enforcement is unlikely to be effective. The writer argued that the Qur’an is full of examples showing that kindness to animals is an important aspect of the Islamic creed, and that pets are in fact permitted.
The embassy also noted that some Saudis disapprove of exorbitant spending on pets while poor families suffer from hunger, disease, and homelessness. “They do not see the care given to dogs and cats as a sign of kindness and mercy, but rather as a lack of humanity.”
Despite the two arguments—that dogs are anti-Islamic and that the keeping of one is decadent—embassy analysts point to Internet chat room conversations as evidence that many Saudis aren’t buying either line. (Those chat rooms are increasingly part of diplomatic reporting, as social media gains traction in countries where more public dissent might be dangerous. Just as older diplomats scanned local papers before drafting their reports, a new generation checks the mood of the public on a constantly changing array of social media.) They concluded that frivolous fatwas expose a divide between religious leaders and the general public. “This is a struggle between old and new. Some will say the field of action for the more conservative elements in Saudi society is constricting, therefore, an increased emphasis on the more inane issues, such as banning pets and Pokemon videos.” 59
NGOS: THE GAME CHANGERS
The officers’ underlying contention in many of these cables is that treatment of animals is a bellwether for the health of civil societies. Where animals are seen as an exploitable resource, they get entangled in endemic corruption. Where animals are caught in a country’s impulse to modernize, they create friction over changing social values. In highly regulated societies, rules governing their care and interaction with humans is a test of transparency. And in places where they struggle for humane treatment, they reflect the growing role of NGOs that are local, Western-based, or global.
Increasingly, these NGOs are well-established international players in their own right. A new generation of environmentally savvy diplomats seeks out NGO colleagues who are better funded, better staffed, and readier to take action, often with decades of considerable on-site expertise. Reporting officers see them as valuable contacts, authoritative sources, and potential partners. On the plus side, Western-based NGOs have deepened their in-country roots, and their staffs often include local people. American diplomats can engage with these local staff, accompany them on journeys to rural backwaters, and rely on their professionalism. Given the usual two- or three-year diplomatic tours, that’s a level of depth no peripatetic diplomat can match.
In addition to the wealth of reporting on wildlife, the WikiLeaks cables reveal the increasing capacity of NGOs to find substantial funding, expertise, and long-term commitment by highly trained experts to travel within countries and reside—sometimes for years—in remote locations, all of which has made them relatively new players on the international stage. By offering diplomats their expertise as full partners, they heighten the odds that their views will be heard in Washington, giving them a wider audience and increasing cachet with policymakers and, of course, potential donors.
But the cables unwittingly reveal how some Western-based wildlife NGOs have effectively done a workaround to manage national governments that are corrupt, inefficient, uncommitted, or simply too distracted by more pressing issues. Aiding this disconnect is the fact that wildlife habitats tend to be in remote regions, far from national capitals. The fact that good conservation work happens without the involvement of national governments should give us pause. Conservation efforts without the active engagement of key players sets up rifts and robs permanent stakeholders of the opportunity to take charge of their own fate. NGOs would argue that many animal populations face such imminent danger of extinction there is no time to wait for national authorities and that repeated prior efforts to engage governments resulted in failure. Saving the animals now means leaving a species intact for a better day when better governments can take on the stewardship themselves. It’s one subtext of the message diplomats are sending Washington.