Key Points:
Caprinae, the family of hoofed animals that includes wild goats and sheep, encompasses about 40 species. Oftentimes, they’re found in mountainous areas where other types of ungulates can’t survive, making them an important food source for predators such as snow leopards.
According to the study, body parts of wild goats and sheep—including eyes, tongues, heads, legs, and tails—are traded as medicinal products. Bottled ointments made from rendered fat and glands are also sold, while horns are marketed primarily as decorations. In addition, the animals’ meat is sold for food.
Trade data for the new study came from a number of sources. From 1998 through 2017, Shepherd and Vincent Nijman, co-author of the study and a wildlife trade researcher at Oxford Brookes University, made 20 visits to four wildlife markets in Myanmar where they documented 1,041 wild sheep or goat parts or products. They estimated that these represented 35 blue sheep, 93 gorals, 810 serows, and 90 takins. (They also found parts from an some 13 Tibetan antelopes, another Caprinae species that is not native to Myanmar and is strictly prohibited from international trade.)
Most of what they saw was being sold as medicine—serow tongue for broken bones, for example, and serow oil for aching muscles and joints—or as trophies or talismans. On menus at about a dozen restaurants in Yangon, Mong La, and Golden Rock, they noted dishes advertised as wild sheep or goat.
Taken as a whole, the work implicates nearly 1,700 wild sheep and goats in illegal trade—“and that’s just based on our limited research,” Shepherd says. The sleuthing also shows that the problem is especially pronounced in towns bordering China and Thailand. “The central government has very little control of some of these border areas, and that’s where illegal wildlife trade thrives,” Nijman says.
The estimated 1,243 serow—a species vulnerable to extinction—is a particularly alarming number, says Alice Hughes, a conservation biologist at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved in the research. “This shows hunting poses a considerable risk to the species,” she says, and at the same time, there’s “no real effort to prevent trafficking and trade, which is clearly needed.”
The wildlife poaching problem the world isn't paying attention to
This title may seem hyperbolic for zoochat but I thought some might find it interesting all the same.
Caprinae, the family of hoofed animals that includes wild goats and sheep, encompasses about 40 species. Oftentimes, they’re found in mountainous areas where other types of ungulates can’t survive, making them an important food source for predators such as snow leopards.
According to the study, body parts of wild goats and sheep—including eyes, tongues, heads, legs, and tails—are traded as medicinal products. Bottled ointments made from rendered fat and glands are also sold, while horns are marketed primarily as decorations. In addition, the animals’ meat is sold for food.
Trade data for the new study came from a number of sources. From 1998 through 2017, Shepherd and Vincent Nijman, co-author of the study and a wildlife trade researcher at Oxford Brookes University, made 20 visits to four wildlife markets in Myanmar where they documented 1,041 wild sheep or goat parts or products. They estimated that these represented 35 blue sheep, 93 gorals, 810 serows, and 90 takins. (They also found parts from an some 13 Tibetan antelopes, another Caprinae species that is not native to Myanmar and is strictly prohibited from international trade.)
Most of what they saw was being sold as medicine—serow tongue for broken bones, for example, and serow oil for aching muscles and joints—or as trophies or talismans. On menus at about a dozen restaurants in Yangon, Mong La, and Golden Rock, they noted dishes advertised as wild sheep or goat.
Taken as a whole, the work implicates nearly 1,700 wild sheep and goats in illegal trade—“and that’s just based on our limited research,” Shepherd says. The sleuthing also shows that the problem is especially pronounced in towns bordering China and Thailand. “The central government has very little control of some of these border areas, and that’s where illegal wildlife trade thrives,” Nijman says.
The estimated 1,243 serow—a species vulnerable to extinction—is a particularly alarming number, says Alice Hughes, a conservation biologist at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved in the research. “This shows hunting poses a considerable risk to the species,” she says, and at the same time, there’s “no real effort to prevent trafficking and trade, which is clearly needed.”
The wildlife poaching problem the world isn't paying attention to
This title may seem hyperbolic for zoochat but I thought some might find it interesting all the same.