Animal Genocide, Mob Style

In four years of undercover work, Steven Galster has been all over the world, from the black markets of Zimbabwe to the back alleys of Moscow. Most of the time, he has felt reasonably safe -- but not always. "I had one meeting with a Russian gang that had been burned before," he says, "and I had a funny feeling about it. I was wired up and wearing a hidden camera, but I decided to take off the recorder and hide it in my gym bag. They frisked me, but it was O.K." It might have easily gone otherwise: the people he hung out with were frequently armed and very dangerous, as hoods involved in weapons dealing, gambling, drug smuggling, money laundering and prostitution usually are.

Galster, however, wasn't especially interested in any of those unsavory activities. As a co-director of the San Francisco -- based Endangered Species Project, he goes after the illicit trade in wildlife. And there is no shortage of work. Unsanctioned traffic in animals and animal parts -- birds of prey, tiger skins, tiger bones and bear gallbladders out of Russia; rhino horns and elephant ivory from Africa; whale meat into Japan; rare birds and snakes from South America -- has more than doubled in value since 1989, generating an estimated $6 billion in annual revenues. According to Interpol, the international police agency, wildlife trafficking is now the second largest form of black-market commerce, behind drug smuggling and ahead of arms dealing.

Plenty of laws and international agreements forbid such trade, but enforcement ranges from spotty to nonexistent. That's why delegates to this week's 126-nation biennial meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Fort Lauderdale will be considering a proposal for a worldwide enforcement agency that would pool information from member countries and coordinate prosecution efforts.

But as a report being issued this week by Galster's group makes disturbingly clear, such an agency could find itself overwhelmed as soon as it is created. The reason: not only have small-time wildlife smugglers become increasingly organized and professional, but -- more ominously -- traditional organized- crime operations have finally awakened to the huge profit potential of wildlife smuggling.

In Japan, for example, the 300 or so minke whales killed legally each year can't begin to satisfy the demand for whale meat, a delicacy that commands about $100 a plate. Customs officials frequently seize illegal shipments on the way into the country. But plenty slips through, and a recent study published in Science suggests that some of it comes from whales that can't be hunted legally. Investigators bought whale meat in retail markets all over ! Japan. Using DNA tests, researchers found that some of it came from fin whales, humpbacks and other protected species. "We were stunned to find humpback being sold in a Hiroshima supermarket," says Don White, president of Earthtrust, the Hawaii-based group that sponsored the study. "They've been protected since 1966."