Continuing on with threats to primary conservation. We're going to go ahead and we're going to address some traditional medicine and some non-timber forest products. Again, these particular topics can be covered in great detail. We're just burn through them really rapidly but really want to give you an idea, the full spectrum of things that go into conservation concerns for primates. Traditional medicine. This is going to be a strong simplification of the ideas, but just wanting to get how these things actually connect in there. A basic principle is by ingesting animal parts, you gain the strength or virality of that animal. What do we actually see and what does that look like if you guys have heard about bear bile? This is a moon bear Asiatic moon bear, and they're quite often taken from the forests and they're generally put into small cages and they are tapped for the bile. They tap into the gall bladder to get the bile. The bile is then mixed with food or mixed with alcohol, and if you drink that then it will give you the strength of the bear or it'll give you any of these other ideas. Generally they have to do with, if you think about Chinese medicine or traditional Chinese medicine, a lot of it really is for the strength, so for virality. The best example of that here's the bear bile, but is tiger and tiger penis. A specific restaurant chain in China called Guo Li Zhuang penis restaurant. The quote from a time article that we'll get to in a moment is, "For that burn, there's only one place to look in terms of nourishing the young tiger penis is definitely top. If you handle tiger penis properly and mixed together with Chinese herbs, it really has the best possible effect, much better than Viagra. Lots of people come here asking for tiger penis, but it's illegal, so we don't sell it. That particular turner phase it's illegal so we don't do it, is common the world over in terms of, yeah, just look over here and we've got that for you. This is where we get a lot of these traditional medicine ideas and how we end up with a lot of animals that have been collected and killed." In terms of the most traded species in the illegal animal trade, this is a pangolin which they're really incredibly cool creatures and you don't see them very much, you don't hear about them a lot, but as I said they are the most traded species in the world. The international fund for animal welfare has listed these guys out as the most trafficked illegal traded animal in the world due to the exploitation of the scales and body parts. In Asia, pangolin scales are used in traditional medicine and the animals need to serve as a delicacy for the wealthy. In Africa pangolins are sold as bush meat in local communities and poacher stockpile the animal parts to be traffic to East Asia. There's a ton of animal trade and a ton of traditional medicine trade that comes out of Africa and works its way into various parts of Asia. In the last decade, more than one million pangolins were poached and in 2019 alone, more than 80 tons of pangolin scales were confiscated worldwide. There is some hope for these guys right this moment. China is moving to actually protect them and it's taken pangolin scales off of traditional medicine rochesters and roles after a lot of these wildlife are found to be at the heart of how this COVID outbreak had started. We'll have to see whether or not there's a change for them for good, but we can always hope. Again, there's much more to it and in some instances there are some traditional medicines that are effective, I'm not trying to just completely shoot all that down, but the torture of animals in order to give humans greater powers or strength or anything else along these lines is something that I cannot get behind. This particular article traditional Chinese medical authorities are unable to stop the booming treat in rare animal parts. This is from 2016, and this is again just another one of the examples that this continues on and seen all over the world. Images from this article, a woman talking with their customer at a stall that selling pangolin scales and other exotic animal parts and this is takes place in Burma. Then, tiger claws and teeth sold at a high-end shop also in Burma. You've got these animal parts being used for medicine, these animal parts being used for decoration, they're used as status symbols. Remember we talked about this increase in money, increase in wealth. Well, people have a taste for these things and now that they've got some extra money, they're going to go ahead and get their hands on them. An example for primates, and this one is just always really sad to me because I really do like loris. So slow loris, little small primates live in Southeast Asia. They're believed to cure over a 100 diseases including STDs, alleviation of pain from childbirth, muscle and stomach ache, and healing broken bones and burns. So because of this belief that you can be healed and all these waves by the loris, they are really on the brink of extinction because they're being hunted out for them. There is a great example of the skin of the loris and the fur on the loris is very reminiscent of this lichen that grows on tree bark and that has been known to help staunch bleeding. So it's assumed that because the loris looks very similar to that, that if you can use their skin and you can use their fur for it. So one more thing that the loris are being hunted out for. This Little Fireface Project is a fantastic group that have been doing a lot of work on loris conservation. We'll probably circle back around on them again to talk a little bit more about what they're doing. So NTFPs, that is that non-timber forest products and Conservation International defines them as any product other than timber that is naturally produced in forests and can be harvested for human use without cutting down trees. So here's a way to think about adding extra financial benefit to forested areas. Some of these can be nuts, berries, mushrooms, seeds, and then non-food items. So medicinal plants, oils, perfumes. One very famous example of this is the Acai Berry. So here they're shown they grow in this palm. Once the berries are harvested, then they can be turned into any number of things. So this was just something randomly grabbed off there for people that enjoy their smoothies. The Acai Berry is considered a super food. So provides great nutritional benefit. When we're looking at non-timber forest products, a majority of them are used by the people who actually harvest them. So they're used as food, they're used for construction materials, they are used for fuel, they are used for medicines. If these things are sold, they're generally done in such small amounts to other locals and it prevents their use from being recorded or cataloged in official economic reports, even though they may have significant non-cash benefits. So a hidden economy, so to speak, within here. So as a result of this, they're are importance to people, especially the rural poor, it's been vastly underestimated, with recent studies suggesting that one-third of non-timber forest products are consumed in local economies without entering the market. We've seen examples of this, kinnow was another one that came up as being suddenly a very popular food item. So much so that it was driving the price and really kind of screwing a lot of the local people. The Acai berries are shipped all over the world and used all over the world, but they're still being produced and used by local peoples. What's interesting about this is, there was a study in 2017 and it talks about the good and bad. You can add value to the forest, but it can also be overused. So this anthropogenic disturbance of tropical forest, threatens pollination services to Acai palm in the Amazon River Delta. What the authors found is that you can have over-harvesting of some of these products. So palm parts is an example of that, and they can lead to them being endangered in the wild. The opposite end of the spectrum is when there's such a demand and a drive for these things they can begin to be over managed. So they found that through this over management, it resulted in these plantation type areas where other non-producing trees are cut down. So in a bid to increase production of this, they get rid of other trees, and what's interesting about it is this is called green deforestation. So you're cutting down the trees, but you're still trying to produce these things that grow naturally within the area. It appears that there's a forest, but it's a much less biodiverse than a natural one. So you're cutting away all this biodiversity, you're setting up almost this monocrop within the areas and it greatly changes it. So this 2017 study, it showed this phenomenon with Acai and the managed plantations are actually less productive because of reduced pollinator activity. So you go through, you change the forest, you change the activity in it, and you can really start to see a lot of detriments to it. So that's just a very small, just wanting to throw these ideas out of what are other things that are threatening primates and other things that are threatening biodiversity within the forest. We're going to go ahead and close here and we're going to move on to the next topic, which is going to be illegal animal trade. So again, here's Little Fireface Project with some of the social media campaigns that they have out there. Buying illegal animals is not rescuing our saving them, every animal purchase means many more stolen from the wild, purchasing wildlife creates a market for traders. So one more of these threats that we're going to need to contend with.
