An Old Threat Resurfaces
THE JAGUAR’S CORPSE was ceremoniously extended on the ground. Its eyes were closed, and a swarm of flies hovered over its half-opened jaws. “This is the dangerous species that lives in the woods,” intones the man filming the dead animal with his cellphone in Sranan Tongo, the vernacular language of Suriname. “Today is the day you were shot.” He steps away from the lean corpse of the feline, beautiful even in death, before continuing: “We had seen [you] a couple of times before. You were doing a show, and today we shot you. We are going to cook you and eat you.” In September of 2022, the video of the dead jaguar started circulating in Surinamese social media. One of the first people to receive it was Els van Lavieren, a Marine & Wildlife Conservation Program manager at Conservation International Suriname and a consultant for the big cat conservation group Panthera. Van Lavieren, an affable Dutch primatologist with a leonine mane, had been analyzing the dynamics of wildlife trafficking in the small South American nation for almost half a decade. During that time, she had compiled a database of events related to the illegal trade of felines. There were 70 records involving jaguars: fangs sold at massage centers and Chinese stores, pelts seized near illegal gold mines or at small roadside stands, jaguar skulls in jewelry stores, week-old cubs in private residences, and carcasses paraded in logging camps, farms, and, as in this footage, on social media. This particular video confounded her. Outside of some small factions in Suriname’s Chinese community, who might partake of jaguar parts for their supposed medicinal purposes, she had never heard of people eating jaguars… Early last year, I traveled to Suriname to investigate the trafficking of jaguar parts from America to Asia, where people reportedly use the fangs, bones, and claws as ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine, or as luxury status symbols in a subculture known as Wenwan... The illegal trade of jaguar parts is a relatively old story... But unlike the wider trafficking of jaguar parts, reports from Suriname about the production of jaguar paste — a replacement for tiger glue, popular in Vietnam and Thailand for supposed health benefits — was new. This made the country a great candidate for understanding the evolution of the trade. Journalist Santiago Willis’s feature in our Autumn 2023 print issue delves into jaguar-poaching in Suriname, one of South America's most obscure countries, as rising demand for this big cat’s body parts threatens to undo decades of conservation work.
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