Skin cure fad threatening Myanmar’s wild elephants
Elephant poaching in the country has jumped tenfold in recent years
Under the shadow of Myanmar’s famed ‘Golden Rock’, punters haggle for the latest traditional medicine cure — slices of skin from the country’s fast disappearing wild elephants sold for a few dollars a square inch.
A set of stairs winds behind one of the Buddhist country’s most holy sites to a maze of shops openly selling everything from pieces of ivory and tiger’s teeth to vials of bear oil.
But there is a new fad luring devotees of traditional medicine.
“Elephant’s skin can cure skin diseases like eczema,” one shop owner, who requested anonymity, told AFP next to a counter brimming with porcupine quills and snake skins.
“You burn pieces of skin by putting them in a clay pot. Then you get the ash and mix it with coconut oil to apply on the eczema.” He breaks off to talk to a potential buyer, who baulks at the price tag of 5,000 kyat ($3.65, Dh13) per square inch (6.5 square centimetres) of elephant skin.
Another young man touting his wares nearby promised a paste made from ground up elephant teeth would “cure pimples and remove black spots”.
“Your face will be smooth and white after you use it,” he said grinning.
Rising demand
Elephant poaching in Myanmar has jumped tenfold in recent years, the government said this week, driven by growing demand for ivory, hide and body parts. Increasingly carcasses are being found stripped of their skin, the hide used for traditional medicine or reportedly turned into beads for jewellery.
Some of it is sold in local markets, but the vast majority goes to feed neighbouring China’s inexhaustible taste for exotic animals.
Myanmar’s wild elephant population is thought to have almost halved over the past decade to around 2,000 to 3,000.
“We’re in the middle of a crisis,” said Antony Lynam, regional adviser at the Wildlife Conservation Society. “If we’re losing this number it can’t be too many more years before wild elephants are gone.”
Trafficking hub
Elephants are one of dozens of endangered species being trafficked through Myanmar, which has become a key hub in the $20-billion-a-year (Dh734 billion) global wildlife trade.
Watchdog Traffic claims the country has “the largest unregulated open markets for tiger parts” in Southeast Asia, which experts say also sell everything from African rhino horn and clouded leopard skins to pangolins.