Last week I visited the US Fish and Wildlife Service's repository for
confiscated wildlife, near Denver, Colorado. They are planning to hold a
huge auction next month and hired me as a consultant to determine which
shells and shell products were on the endangered species list and therefore
couldn't be auctioned.
The warehouse is 27,000 sq. feet (2500 sq. meters), and has aisles filled
with sea turtles, skins of spotted cats, ivory, Chinese medicinals, mounted
birds, boots made of anaconda, python, caiman and crocodile, etc. I sorted
through 60 pallets of shell and coral material in two days, a ten years
accumulation of confiscation. Almost everything that I saw among the shells
was from commericial shipments, and almost everything would have been legal
if accompanied by standard import and export permits. The main thing that
is confiscated for CITES violation is giant clams (mostly Tridacna crocea
and T. squamosa). I saw a single Triton's Trumpet (Charonia tritonis), a
single Green Tree Snail (Papustyla pulcherrima), and a couple of Queen
Conchs (Strombus gigas).
Fish and Wildlife's main concern was polished mother-of-pearl incorporated
into jewelry, figurines, wall hangings and furniture. They were afraid it
might come from endangered freshwater mussels from the United States. In
most cases, while I could not tell what species the mother-of-pearl came
from, I could say it was Haliotis, Nautilus, Trochus, or Pinctada.
Considering that most of the jewelry was made in the Philippines, it is
very unlikely that it did contain native mussels from the United States. I
did see a couple of US natives among the confiscated shells, however,
including channeled and lightning whelks (Busycon canaliculatum and B.
sinistrum), so I suppose anything is possible. So, to be safe, if I
couldn't tell what the source was, the material was pulled from the
auction. This unidentified material came to less than half a pallet and
will be either kept for their reference collection or incinerated.
The volume of material was surprising. There were thousands of cactuses in
varying sizes made from carefully arranged Perna shells. A single
confiscated shipment contained more than 20,000 animal figurines made from
shells. Another had thousands of plastic disks for keychains, with imbedded
shells. One had eighteen pieces of black lacquer furniture from China with
inlaid shell. There were coral bracelets, black coral and Mexican abalone
rings, pendants, pins and earrings by the thousands. The uniformity of the
shipments made it possible to work quickly, since I could identify the
components of a couple of earrings and assume that the rest of the shipment
was the same.
Fish and Wildlife clearly focuses enforcement on commercial shipments
rather than private individuals. I saw nothing that looked like a
confiscated shipment of specimen shells, and only a few small bags of
material that looked like beach-collected shells taken from a vacationer.
Not all confiscated material is shipped to the repository, however, since
local ports can retain material for their own reference collection and
local education programs. The repository also supports educational programs
by giving material of endangered species to accredited museums. They also
run the National Eagle Repository, which processes carcasses of bald and
golden eagles, to make the feathers available to native Americans for
ceremonial purposes.
While I was working alongside the fish and wildlife personnel, an
exterminator came in wearing a respirator mask and started spraying some
kind of fluid on the floor. My eyes were burning a little, so I asked the
head of the facility if we shouldn't be wearing masks too. She said that it
was just a bleach solution used to disinfect mouse droppings found under
the pallets as they were moved, since the mice might be carrying the
hantavirus! The whole operation was dusty and dirty--we wore Tyvek suits
and latex gloves--so I figured at that point, if there was any real danger,
I'd probably already been infected, so I kept working.
The auction will be June 4, 1999 at the Holiday Inn near the new Denver
Airport. Those interested in attending should contact the Public Affairs
Office of the Fish and Wildlife Service at 303-236-7905, ext. 431 and ask
for Karen Miranda Gleason.
Gary
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Rosenberg, Ph.D. [log in to unmask]
Malacology & Invertebrate Paleontology gopher://erato.acnatsci.org
Academy of Natural Sciences http://www.acnatsci.org
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway Phone 215-299-1033
Philadelphia, PA 19103-1195 USA Fax 215-299-1170
|
