Borneo's Hornbill On Brink of Extinction Because of Stupid China

Mon 17 Oct

China people do the same in Peru. They go into high-altitude regions, lie that they are "tourists" when questioned & start doing their thing.

Japanese immigration actually hates China people. The officer I saw, gave 2 China women a very hard time at entry even though they said they were there for "shopping". Thumbprint officer & luggage officer gave me a hard time just because I entered through Taiwan even though I'm from Singapore. Luggage officer said in broken English, "You Singapore. Why you here?". He proceeded to stick his hand in my luggage & stir through it even though I said I was here to see their cherry blossoms.

Airports in hotspots where wildlife or plantlife are endangered must give these China people a very hard time. They have to be interrogated when their passport is China or Hongkong. Just 1 person that gets in, is enough to destroy hundreds of your precious resources. Better to deny entry than have to count chopped arms & heads later.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/craze-hornbill-ivory-pushes-borneo-icon-brink-062523755.html

For decades poachers in Borneo's western forests focused on capturing orangutans and sun bears, but in the past few years a surge in demand for hornbill "ivory" has pushed the avian species to the brink.

The product has become so popular in China, where wealthy collectors are keen to show off their status by acquiring rare or unusual animals, that it is fetching up to five times the price of elephant tusk on the black market.

"In Asia, it's really at a scale where species like the helmeted hornbill are just being completely decimated."

Poachers aren't interested in their brilliant plumage or large bills, but a helmet-like block of reddish-gold keratin at the front of the skulls known as a casque.

It's this soft, ivory-like substance that's carved by craftsmen in China into luxury ornaments, statues and jewellery -- trendy top-shelf trinkets that have soared in value as so-called "red ivory" has grown more prestigious.

Yokyok Hadiprakarsa, a leading expert in helmeted hornbills, estimates as many as 500 were killed every month in 2013 -- or 6,000 annually -- just in West Kalimantan, a jungle-clad province in Indonesia's half of Borneo.

Helmeted hornbills had been traditionally hunted in the past by Borneo's indigenous tribes, but never at levels that posed any conservation risk.

Hunting rapidly intensified, especially among trafficking networks already well entrenched in West Kalimantan, a key wildlife smuggling hub with an international airport in the capital Pontianak.

By the close of 2015, the species had progressed from vulnerable to critically endangered -- leapfrogging two threat levels to the highest possible risk category on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "red list".

Now the elite rangers of the government's Forest Police Rapid Reaction Unit (SPORC) rarely spot these distinctive birds during jungle patrols, SPORC commander David Muhammad told AFP in Pontianak.

Instead, they're uncovering just the skulls during raids on smuggler hideouts, the decapitated corpses dumped unceremoniously elsewhere.

In one case, SPORC units intercepted four Chinese nationals at Pontianak's international airport with nearly 250 casques stashed in their luggage.