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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Holding two baby monkeys that have been smuggled into the Kurdistan Region and sold on the market for a few hundred dollars, two animal sellers in Erbil on Sunday told Rudaw that numerous wild animals, ranging from monkeys to lions and tigers, are being illegally smuggled across the borders.
Safeen Majid has been selling animals for 15 years, and to him, wild animals have become a source of his income, regardless of the inhumane ways in which they are imported into the Kurdistan Region.
“Their parents, we do not know where they are, we have bought them,” Majid said while participating in Rudaw’s early morning program of Pashev, referring to the two monkeys he had brought into the studio with his work colleague Zakaria Mahmood.
“I have not named them because I am a shop owner, why would I name them, I sell them,” Majid said, adding that the price of a baby monkey ranges between $450 and $500 in the market.
For years, hunters and smugglers have taken advantage of chaos, unrest, and the lack of regulations to illegally hunt and trade rare species. Birds and foxes from the remote mountains of Kurdistan and falcons from the scorching plains of southern Iraq are among the targets of a lucrative and illicit trade.
Many other rare breeds of animals are being smuggled into the Kurdistan Region and Iraq to then be sold at high prices.
“Lions and tigers are the most expensive ones in the market,” Majid said, pointing out that a tiger cub could cost up to $45,000, and a male lion cub could go up to $5500.
Between 2008 and 2010, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) introduced environmental protection laws, including some related to hunting, in order to protect the region's wildlife and nature.
The illegal wildlife trade has been pushed underground in the Kurdistan Region in recent years over fears of police crackdowns, but it has not stopped.
Though Iraq in 2014 signed into the Convention on the Protection of Animals, which aims to control the global trade in plants, animals and animal products, illegal trade of wild animals is still a frequent occurrence all over the country.
When asked of the ways they manage to get their hands on the animals, Majid said that they are being smuggled from different countries.
“They come from Pakistan, India, Iran, and so on … it is all smuggling, it is all money,” he said.
However, he was interrupted immediately by Mahmood in an attempt to correct the situation by saying they legally get the animals.
“It used to be smuggled, but now there are zoos, we get them legally, the zoos get them legally and we buy it from them,” Mahmood said.
According to the Global Environment Facility, the “value of illegal trade has been estimated at between $7 and $23 billion per year, making wildlife crime one of the most lucrative illegal businesses, often run by sophisticated, international, and well-organized criminal networks seeking to exploit the high rewards and low risks of the trade.”
The illegal trade of wild animals in the Kurdistan Region has also grasped the attention of wildlife activists.
“They say that it is smuggled, the zoos do not do business with those animals,” wild life expert and activist Korsh Ararat told Rudaw English on Sunday, referring to Mahmood’s claim that they get the animals legally.
“These animals are not local to here [Kurdistan Region], and those monkeys could carry many different kinds of diseases, it is not just a vaccine shot or two, there are numerous amounts of different diseases,” Ararat said, adding that “the problem here is that security forces think that national security is all about catching terrorists, but they do not realize that a major part of national security is the environment and once that is ruined, everything else will follow.”
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