EDITORIAL - Get the buyers

Back in 2005, over 6,700 kilograms of elephant tusks were seized at Manila’s South Harbor and the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Several months later in 2006, many of the tusks, valued at P30 million, went missing from storage in a 40-foot shipping container in a warehouse. Most of the missing tusks were reportedly traced to a religious store at the Our Lady of Manaoag shrine.

In May 2009, Customs personnel also seized about 4,500 kg of ivory tusks, valued at P21 million, again at the South Harbor, in a shipment declared as plastic waste from Tanzania. Stored at the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Nature Center in Quezon City, some of the tusks valued at P3 million disappeared in March 2010.

Where there are buyers, there is always a thriving trade in endangered wildlife and other contraband. Last Aug. 25, six black rhinoceros horns valued at P72 million were found concealed in a 20-foot shipping container with 300 sacks of cashew nuts. The horns, popular in traditional Asian medicine, arrived at the Manila International Container Port from Mozambique.

Authorities must come down hard not just on wildlife poachers and smugglers but also on the buyers. In the Philippines, thieves steal telephone lines to obtain copper wires for sale to metal dealers. These fences also buy stolen household aluminum ladders and even the covers of manholes. Carjacking continues to thrive because there are ready buyers for stolen vehicles and many fences for cannibalized auto parts.

These days the favorite targets of thieves are electronic gadgets, particularly laptops, tablet computers and mobile phones. Victims have been killed for their cell phones. The stolen items are often brought to fences that proliferate in crowded shopping areas. Many of the fences should be known to the police, but there is little interest in enforcing laws against fencing.

The same is true of trafficking in endangered wildlife. Unless authorities start prosecuting buyers of contraband along with the smugglers and middlemen, the Philippines will continue to be a wildlife trafficking center. As long as the prospect of profit is there, suppliers will always try to meet the demand.