EU study boost fight against illegal wildlife trade in Mekong region

The European Union has launched an intensive study about the illegal wildlife trade in the Greater Mekong Region and its threat to biodiversity.

The report, entitled “Larger than Tigers”, hopes to encourage the Greater Mekong countries, which include Myanmar, to intensify efforts against the illegal wildlife trade, which is a threat to biodiversity in the region.

According to the report, there are 795 threatened species in the region, of which 123 are endangered due to indiscriminate hunting and trading.

It noted that China and Vietnam are the two largest markets for wildlife products globally, and the Greater Mekong countries are the source, transit routes, and markets for these illicit products.

In Myanmar, hunting for illegal wildlife is pervasive, although it is reported that 70 percent of the country's territory have been declared as protected areas. There are 331 threatened species in Myanmar, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The endangered species include birds, primates, banteng (wild cattle), the Asian elephant, Eld's deer, freshwater turtles, pangolin and tigers, among others.

"The EU is committed to wildlife conservation in Myanmar and across the world. Myanmar's beautiful rainforests and majestic animals are threatened by wildlife crime and environmental degradation," said EU Ambassador Kristian Schmidt.

He added that the EU supports Myanmar's efforts to safeguard its precious natural heritage for future generations, including by immediately stopping all illegal wildlife trade, and he hoped the report “will strengthen everyone's resolve to do so.”

U Saw Htun, country director of the Wildlife Conservation Society, said "the population of keystone species has been decreasing at an alarming rate, and several species could go extinct if there are no effective actions to combat wildlife crime."

Illegal wildlife products include more than 1000 plant and animals species used for traditional medicine, exotic food, ornaments and clothing, and the exotic pet trade.

In Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the illegal wildlife trade is estimated to be worth €17 million (K29.06 billion/US$19.21 million) annually.

The Larger than Tigers report is the product of two years of intensive, collaborative research involving 28 authors and consultation with 382 experts from over 150 organisations in over 25 Asian countries.

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EU congratulates Myanmar on tackling illegal wildlife trade

The European Union (EU) has congratulated Myanmar on tackling illegal wildlife trade in a statement to mark World Wildlife Day that falls on 3 March.

The following is their statement:

The European Union (EU) Delegation issues the following statement in agreement with the EU Heads of Mission in Myanmar:

Wildlife trafficking has become one of the most profitable criminal activities worldwide, with devastating effects for biodiversity and very damaging impact on sustainable development and poverty eradication.

On the occasion of World Wildlife Day on 3 March 2019, the Heads of Mission of the European Union (EU) and its Member States wish to congratulate the Government of Myanmar for the reinforced initiatives taken over the past year to protect the country's magnificent and endangered wildlife and biodiversity.

In May 2018, the Union Parliament passed the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Law, which is one of the strongest wildlife protection laws in the region. On World Wildlife Day, the Government of Myanmar will publicly destroy seized ivory and wildlife parts. This is part of a series of events to destroy all stockpiles. The Yangon Regional Government has banned all illegal sales of wildlife in Yangon Region as of October 2018, and the Union Government has committed to roll this ban out nationwide. The Government has also increased public awareness campaigns and engagement on illegal wildlife trade issues through public campaigns, building on the Voices for Wildlife coalition, which is supported by several EU Member States. In October 2018, the UK hosted the London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade where the Government of Myanmar detailed its achievements over the past year.

These steps are hugely commendable, however Myanmar still faces challenges. For example, elephant poaching for ivory and other parts is still a huge issue both globally and in Myanmar. Although the elephant skinning crisis in Myanmar has reduced, thanks, in part, to increased wildlife ranger patrols, Myanmar is still facing a struggle to protect its wild elephant population, and the populations of some of its other endangered species, such as the pangolin, tiger and turtles.

Therefore, we would also like to take this opportunity to state our support for further action by the Government of Myanmar to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. For example, we believe that it would have a positive impact if the Government of Myanmar could fast-track the nationwide ban on the illegal sale of wildlife parts, including in Myanmar’s border areas.

Other actions, such as effective enforcement of the ban on wildlife sales and tackling the illicit financial flows from illegal wildlife trade would reinforce the message that Myanmar has a zero tolerance approach to wildlife crime. As long as criminals continue to sell illegal wildlife products to satisfy consumer demand in China and elsewhere, Myanmar’s wildlife is at risk, and this trade will continue to fill the pockets of criminal gangs, and rob Myanmar of its beautiful and diverse wildlife.

Ending wildlife trafficking is a shared responsibility and we must all take concrete action. In 2016, the EU adopted an EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking and since then the EU and its Member States have ramped up their actions for strengthening the EU’s role in the global fight against these illegal activities through greater enforcement of our comprehensive legal framework, better cooperation and more effective prevention. The next Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES CoP18, Sri Lanka) – to which Myanmar acceded in 1997, and the EU became a party in 2015 – will allow us to turn our commitments into actions to address wildlife trafficking worldwide.

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Asian elephants may lose up to 42 percent of suitable habitats in India and Nepal by 2070

Protecting and expanding suitable habitats for wildlife is key to the conservation of endangered species, but owing to climate and land use change the ideal habitats of today may not be fitting in 30 or 50 years. An international team of scientists therefore predicted range shifts of Asian elephants in India and Nepal using species distribution models based on distribution data for the elephants and climate projections. While a few regions in the north and northeast of the subcontinent may provide more suitable habitats in the future, overall a heavy loss is probable in all scenarios. The complex effects of environmental change on the distribution of the elephants is elucidated in a paper published in the journal Diversity and Distributions.

It is well known that climate change, land use change, changes in water cycles, and other influencing factors will cause redistribution of species – directly or indirectly. The details of these processes are very complex, however, as effects of global change is manifested very differently on a local scale. In a massive effort, scientists from Spain, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Italy, and Germany worked together in order to assess the combined effects of human pressures and climate change on Asian elephants' distribution, embedded in the human-dominated landscapes in India and Nepal. "We compiled a large database of more than four thousand elephant occurrences and a large geodatabase of environmental predictor variables covering India and Nepal for this study," explains Surendra P. Goyal (Wildlife Institute of India). In a first step, this allowed the scientists to predict the current spatial distribution of Asian elephants as a function of environmental variables.

"In addition to ongoing human-induced disturbance, especially in the form of land-use change, elephant distribution is influenced by complex local scale interactions among precipitation and temperature, complicated by seasonal monsoon in this region," explains lead author Rajapandian Kanagaraj from the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN) in Madrid (Spain). The scientists estimated that around 256 thousand square kilometres of habitat are suitable for elephants in India and Nepal.

In a second step the effects of climate changes were included into the distribution model to predict future elephant distributions and possible range shifts. Relying on climate and land use data projections for 2050 and 2070, different scenarios were calculated. All scenarios strongly indicate that the interaction between climate change and land use will compound existing threats to the elephant.

"We anticipate that elephant range would likely shift towards higher elevations in the Himalayas, and along a gradient of water availability, instead of a simple unidirectional range shift towards higher elevations and latitudes typically expected when temperature is the principal factor," explains Miguel B. Araújo, expert on climate change and biodiversity at MNCN, Madrid, in whose lab this collaborative study was undertaken.

In a scenario where only climate change is included, the loss of potential habitat is more moderate, but still substantial with a 17.1 percent loss in one scenario in 2070. "The negative effect is especially severe in the human-dominated landscapes in eastern and southern India," say Priya Davidar and Jean-Philippe Puyravaud (Sigur Nature Trust, India). Gain in potential habitat is indicated in northern and northeastern habitats particularly along the valleys in the Himalayan foothills. "Our model projections suggest that the projected future changes in the distribution of elephants in India and Nepal would be driven mainly by changes in the climatic water balance, followed by changes in temperature and other ongoing human-induced disturbance," Kanagaraj and Araújo conclude.

For that reason, building comprehensive and robust spatial models is crucial to assess the impact of environmental changes in wildlife populations. "The database consisted of 115 environmental variables: 60 climatic, 16 human disturbance, 29 forest and vegetation and 10 topographic variables, all at a grid resolution of 1 kilometre," says Thorsten Wiegand, modelling expert from the Environmental Research Centre (UFZ), Leipzig. Occurrence data relied on 4,626 elephant sightings between 1990 and 2017, with the vast majority of sightings after 2002.

"The art of modelling here was distilling the most biologically plausible environmental predictors and eliminating redundant correlations," Stephanie Kramer-Schadt, head of the department of Ecological Dynamics at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), explains the methods. The team calculated and tested several models which can forecast the distribution only from the remaining nine environmental variables.

"In the end we have to acknowledge that are dealing with models of distribution and environmental change," Kramer-Schadt adds. This approach enabled the team to develop highly probable scenarios for range shifts of the elephants under global change, but the predictions are always connected with a level of uncertainty.

The results of this comprehensive study nevertheless have important implications concerning conservation efforts as the suitability maps and future projections can be effectively used to identify critical habitat areas that require immediate conservation attempts. Furthermore the projections can inspire adjustments to current habitat protection strategies.

A supplementary analysis highlighted the importance of connected habitats: "The model only predicts the suitability of a 1 km2 grid cell without accounting for the movement capacity of elephants and their home range sizes, so we added the core range analysis to identify high suitability areas larger than the size of two average home ranges and an analysis of the connectivity of core areas that considers the maximal displacement capacity of elephants," says Kanagaraj.

"The results underline the pressure that is expected on the habitats on southern and eastern India as it is where large core areas can be found," says Surendra P. Goyal. Further, the analysis suggests that the fragmented core areas that are located along the foothills forests and floodplains of the Himalaya could be connected by a mixture of poor‐ and high‐quality habitat that should form specific targets for management. These results provide a first assessment of areas that could provide connectivity among core areas.

"We are certain that conservation of remaining habitat will always remain the centrepiece of biodiversity conservation," the team states. "Our study provides a first assessment on the effect of climate change on the distribution of the Asian elephant in its major habitats in India and Nepal, which could help other assessments over its entire range across South and South‐East Asia, and be useful for developing management plans for wildlife conservation under the aegis of climate change."

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