Ancarit chimed in at a voice level that more than filled our limo. “We have a plan, Mr. Knight. The best part. They said we could use the ship that had been taken from the smugglers by the FBI. When we have the animals that survived back in good health, we’ll use the ship to take them back to their homes on the river in Brazil. Thank God, Mr. Knight.”
I could hear Ansuro now in the background. “And thank you, Michael. You should see this. You’d cry for joy.”
When I looked over at Terry, I could see teardrops running streams of mascara down her cheeks. We rode in silence for a few minutes. I needed the time to absorb what Ansuro and Ancarit had said. It was the bright light at the end of what had been a seemingly endless tunnel.
Terry broke the silence. “Michael, I think it’s time you finally give away the secret. I know you wanted to plan it as a surprise. But now, where are we going on our honeymoon?”
I held my breath when I broke the surprise I’d been planning for a week. “Are you ready?”
“Anywhere you say. Just together.”
“Would you mind if we start our life at the Mayagüez Resort in Puerto Rico? I first planned it just because I think you’ll love it. But now . . .”
I could see her face light with an excitement I could not have anticipated. “But now, Michael, we can see . . . maybe even help with the animals.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
WHAT YOU HAVE just read is fiction. Unfortunately, the unlawful trade in wild animals, birds, fish, and reptiles that form the background for the novel is not fiction.
The illegal wild animal trade is, in fact, second only to drug dealing in terms of profitability in the United States, and third behind drugs and arms dealing in the international criminal trade. Profits worldwide are expected to exceed 20 billion dollars annually.
With an estimated 38 million animals taken out of the Brazilian rainforest, including parrots, monkeys, crocodiles, reptiles, and tropical fish each year—at least 90 percent of which die in the capture and smuggling process—the number of species that have been driven into endangerment or complete extinction is staggering. And it is growing. The illegal trade in ivory has reduced the African elephant population from 1.2 million in the mid-seventies to well below 500,000.
The market in the United States alone is vast. It includes specimens for animal exhibits and collectors, subjects for illegal research and experimentation, personally owned exotic pets, animal parts for mythical medicinal use, and ornamentation for everything from shoes to watchbands.
Over 1,925,000 reptiles and lizards were brought into the United States in one recent year to be sold as pets to owners without the vaguest notion of their physical and behavioral needs—resulting in radically shortened lifespans in captivity. The same fate awaits the thousands of monkeys, lions, tigers, parrots, iguanas, and other exotic species bought and sold as pets.
The rarest animal species, closest to extinction, bring the highest profits on the illegal market. Certain breeds of blue macaws bring a few dollars to the rainforest natives who trap them, but once smuggled into the United States, they sell for $70,000. A golden lion tamarin, an endangered tiny monkey, brings over $20,000.
The lack of interest of the public, and therefore the government, in making or enforcing laws to curb this inhumane industry is evident from the fact that animals on the endangered species list can be purchased openly at dozens of auctions across the country. A number of magazines provide advertisements from dealers. On hundreds of Internet sites that are growing steadily, for a simple credit card charge, home delivery within a few days can be had for a baby Bengal tiger ($1000), a baby baboon ($5000), or even a baby giraffe ($22,000).
Typically, when the baby tiger, lion, bear, ocelot, or python quickly outgrows the baby stage and is big enough to tear the house apart and attack family members, it is generally “gotten rid of”—sometimes to some roadside menagerie, sometimes by abandonment in the wild with little or no chance of survival, or frequently at the business end of a gun.
Proof of the expanding profitability of this illegal trade is the fact that nearly all of the major national and international organized crime syndicates have entered the field in major proportions. The reason is simple. The profits are commensurate with or exceed those from illegal drug and arms dealings without the dangers of prosecution. Since there is as yet no stigma attached to the animal trade, such as that which drives enforcement of laws against drugs or arms dealing, the chances of being caught are minimal. And if caught, the penalties—if imposed at all—are absurdly low, making it a minor cost of doing business.
In fact, for that reason, drug dealers are increasingly using the smuggled animals themselves as vehicles for the smuggling of drugs as well. In fact, the enormous and increasing profits from the illegal animal trade are more and more symbiotically funding the other activities of both organized crime and terrorists.
The downsides of this burgeoning illegal activity include, in addition to the incomprehensible suffering of the animals:
1. Extinction and threatened extinction of countless species that perform integral and important functions in the complex machinery we call our planet’s ecology;
2. The unregulated spread of “zoonotic” diseases—diseases that are passed from animals to humans—including SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), Heartwater Disease, Avian Flu, Plague, Ebola, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis, Malaria, Tuberculosis, Rabies, and Salmonella. One government report states that “The most dangerous emerging infectious diseases, in terms of total fatalities and fatality rates, have come from wildlife.”
3. The introduction of “Invasive Species” when former “pets” are released into the wild, resulting in the endangerment or extinction of native animals by competition for prey or spreading of disease, and disastrous destruction of local ecosystems—for example, the immensely destructive overrunning of southern Florida by rapidly breeding Burmese pythons.
* * *
If the current apathy of the public, and therefore the government, toward addressing both enactment of laws and enforcement of those laws to quell this currently invisible disaster stems from lack of knowledge of the facts, then perhaps the first step toward a solution is to cast a blazing light on those facts. That hope is what compelled me to write this novel.
Fatal Odds Page 30