Buying a red-whiskered bulbul for 10 Baht (0.25 US $) in Three Pagoda Pass is no big deal. The bird, along with many others, are displayed inside cages and openly sold to tourists in the shops along the popular Thai-Burma border market.
The birds in myriad colours fetch prices of up to 3000 Baht (80 US $), depending on the species. They are caught by local people from Burma ’s forests with nets and traditional traps.
Alarming as it may sound, other wildlife sold in the Three Pagoda border includes baby bears and tigers, with prices ranging from 3000 Baht to 7000 (around 100 US $ to 200 US $). A baby leopard can be bought for a pittance -a mere 1,000 Baht (20 US $).
Most of the animals are sold as pets but other buyers seek specific body parts such as tiger skin for medicinal purposes. Others are sold as traditional food.
Given the illicit trade, many animals that used to be commonly seen in the area have disappeared. Hunting wildlife in Thailand is illegal, but hunting wildlife in the Burmese side of the border is hardly seen as breaking the law. Unregulated hunting of wildlife in the Three Pagoda Pass for food and trade to neighbouring countries has brought many of the animals to the brink of extinction.
In 1980, the Forestry Department estimated that there were over 3,000 Bengal and Indo-China tigers in Burma , the second in Asia after India . However, the Hukuang Tiger Reserve reported last December that only 150 tigers are left in Burma .
About 30 years ago, people who traded in various goods along Three Pagoda roads did not dare to sleep on the ground without lighting a fire around their sleeping areas to protect them from tigers wandering along the road.
“If you heard the sound “Klort Klats” below your cottage, the next day you would know a cow had been lost because the tiger had taken it,” Nai Lyi Mnote, a former trader who used to do business in Thailand 30 years ago, said.
In the 1980s, residents could still see elephants, bears, rhinoceros, tapir, buffalo and other wildlife in the thick forests around Three Pagoda Pass township.
“You would not dare to walk at night in the “Tai Pi Mae” campsite, 15 kilometres west of Three Pagoda,” said Thu Rein, a former Mon soldier explaining about the dangers of wildlife in the region in those days.
These days however, people in the Mon camp Hlockhanee (near Three Pagoda Pass town) have to go on a hunting trip for two days just to catch one animal for food, said Nai Ba San, a local hunter. They caught a kind of monkey that is a typical Mon food in one such trip in a village west of Three Pagoda Pass.
“It is difficult to hunt for a squirrel in the Three Pagoda Pass town area now. Fifteen years ago, we could hunt deer. We saw tiger pugs and elephant footprints around here,” said Nai Thu Rein, who has lived in Three Pagoda Pass for more than 16 years.
“I believe that the wildlife has moved away and out of the area. Now we can find wildlife north of the town, about 60 kilometres away. But it is rare,” Nai ThuRein added.
Local people have to go to southern villages, more than 60 kilometres away, to find wildlife such as bears or monkeys.
In upper Burma , a government wildlife survey team has found sambar, barking deer, wild boar, Asiatic black bear, large and brown squirrels, small chipmunks, and civets.
The wildlife protection Act of 1936 legislated by British colonizers had no provision for the conservation of wildlife, so the military government enacted the new Natural and Wildlife Act in 1994. In the new wildlife law, the military government placed 39 mammals, 50bird species and nine reptiles in the strictly protected list. Among the protected animals, there were 12 mammals, 43 birds and six reptiles and among seasonally protected animals were two mammals and 13 birds.
However the military government’s law is hardly enforced and local businessmen are still trading in wildlife actively to neighbouring countries. In northern Burma , a local trader Mong La was reported to be selling wildlife to China , according to an article by Vanda Felbab-Brown in The Boston Globe on March 24, 2006.
Apart from hunting, wildlife in Three Pagoda Pass is disappearing due to deforestation and loss of natural habitat caused by illegal logging activities of local businessmen.
“When I was young, we did not dare go outside the village because there were a lot of tigers. But we can go now because the people put a plantation on the top of the mountain where the tigers lived,” said Mi Ti, (56) who lives in a coastal village in southern Burma . This is just one example of how development projects are also destroying wildlife.
