Back in the 80's, I was a voluntary wildlife officer, and with my position as Curator in one of the largest private collections of African and Asian big game museums in the world I got involved quite a bit with advising customs officials about various skins, and animal products.
You would be amazed at what was smuggled into the UK. In particular I remember a whole rack of waistcoats in a bonded store in London that I saw. These turned out to be all made from baby Elephant skins. Rhino horn was also highly prized, mostly for knife handles in the Yemen. The shavings from this were turned into blister pack pills and sold to the Chinese.
Let alone the primate heads as paper weights, and the enormous amount of python and caiman skins ready to be turned into bags or shoes. Wildlife smuggling was at the time second to drug running, although I would think people smuggling is now the top priority, along with drugs.
Until these extinction rebellion lot start to realise that there bleating and jumping up and down is a waste of bloody time, they will continue to think that they are making a difference. NOT A HOPE.
The basic problem with all of this is the illegal trade, poaching, and big industry along with a great many corrupt government officials, there in lies the problem.
oxpeckers.org
