Black Market: Inside the Endangered Species Trade in Asia

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 176 pages
• Published by: Earth Aware Editions September 10, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1932771220
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1932771220
• Book Dimensions: 9.8 x 9.3 x 0.6 inches
• Weighs: 2 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
With more than 100 powerful color and b&w photos, this at once eye-opening and deeply disturbing book is an urgent call to action. Davies, a Bangkok-based journalist, describes the plight of various disappearing Asian species, including tigers, bears and leopards in Thailand; pythons and other snakes in Vietnam; and Sumatran orangutans. Davies points to traditional beliefs in the healing powers of animal parts as a major driving force of the market, and takes the reader through several poaching scenarios to illuminate how the animal trade actually works. Some of the photographs in the book are not for the faint-of-heart (severed tiger heads, bear paws, pickled snakes, etc.), but the book sheds light on a shadowy, often illegal set of practices.
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Product Description
From the Russian Mafia in Siberia to freelance poachers in Thailand, Black Market is an unforgettable journey inside the grisly Endangered Species Trade, where unsanctioned global trafficking of rhino horn, tiger bone, ivory and rare birds has become a profitable industry for sophisticated organized crime networks and unscrupulous buyers around the world. Following in the footsteps of celebrity advocates Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh, and Angelina Jolie, Black Market exposes the unsettling truth about the cruel exploitation and bureaucratic indifference surrounding the multibillion-dollar underground industry that drives wildlife exploitation. Includes over 100 gripping black and white and color photographs with never-before-seen aspects of the illegal trade, up-close photojournalism uncovering illegal activities of poachers, traders and wildlife enforcement agencies, heroic tales of impassioned conservation efforts and the valiant individuals and organizations battling to save the world’s precious wildlife heritage.

Reader Reviews
This is a superb book with easily readable text, tragic photos, and compelling stories. It has sections that alternatively focus on different geographic locations, animals, and types of problems. It also discusses some of the history of the wildlife trade. If there is a downside, it is that the book is depressing because of the scale of destruction going on. In fact, the wildlife trade is one of the largest underground markets, second only to the drug trade. But the book is a great attempt to shed more light on this dark subject. Comment | | (Report this)