This shot was from Jilin in Northern China. Jilin is one of the tiger-smuggling hot spots within China, which is really just a product of its geography. It has a border with the Russian Far East (and includes a relic population of Amur or Siberian tigers).
On one evening we went 'cultural' and part of the performance was these traditional Chinese drummers.
Posts Tagged travel
Tuesday #Travel – The beat goes on Oct 23
No CommentsTuesday #Travel: Watching You Sep 11
No CommentsInternational borders are one of those fun spots in the world, where contraband items try to make it across. The province of Jilin is one 'hot spot' of smuggling activity of tiger parts.
Now, not everybody who watches border areas are interested in wildlife. It seems military forces also take an interest in what their neighbours are doing. This Chinese mobile unit (radar?) is positioned facing North Korea.
Tuesday #Travel: Sunset Sep 04
No CommentsA shot from the West Coast of the South Island. The sun is starting to set, giving the sky a red hue. The West Coast is one of the best places in New Zealand to do landscape photography, with the proviso you have to be there when it's not raining :)
Tuesday #Travel Photo 2 Aug 21
No CommentsA picture of the marina at Picton (South Island, NZ)
(I liked the way the late afternoon light interacted with the whites and greens in this scene)
Tuesday Travels Aug 14
No CommentsCyclist in the border-city of Hekeu (Jilin province). They don't seem to big on helmet laws. Or cap laws.
Some scenes from Hun-Chun Sep 14
No CommentsI was at a tiger conference in Hun-Chun (Jilin province) late last year. This is part of China that borders the Russian Far-East and North Korea and the area is sufficiently isolated, it's home to many of China's Amur tigers (or as is more commonly referred to in some parts of the West, the Siberian tiger).
One thing that quickly strikes you as you travel through China, is that it is a lot more diverse than people often think. Hun-Chun was a good illustration of that. The place was still too small to merit its own airport- we flew to Yanji and then had to drive to reach the place. Some of my fellow conference attendees remarked that customs in Beijing were bewildered when they were told where we were going. They'd never heard of the place. Still, we seemed to convince them it was a real place in China. I made up the name of some fictional hotel on my entry card. This was one of those kind of spontaneous trips where nobody actually told us where we were staying. The plan was just to fly to some remote part of China and see what happened next.
Hun-Chun turns out to have its own native Russian and Korean populations. So unlike say Hekeu where all the signs were in Chinese and Vietnamese, Hun-Chun was a very tri-lingual place:
My Hotel
The hotel's name was described in three languages- Korean, Chinese and Cyrillic. I guess that's also a good indication that tourists from the English-speaking world have yet to find it too.
This guy had a folding bicycle- helmet laws for cyclists seem non-existent in China.
Not entirely sure about this scene. The man is transporting two large dogs, one of which was definitely enjoying the ride.
I have a nagging feeling though that these may not be pets, but food.
Traveling for the Itinerant Conservationist Jun 14
No CommentsTraveling is one of those things you can end up doing a lot of as a conservationist. There are a few things that are useful to be aware of.
A sharp knife for instance, can be very useful in all sorts of places. Once certain parasites reach a suitable size under your skin, it’s straightforward to dig them out with a sharp knife (and oh, it feels good too).
It’s also much more enjoyable if you can plan visits to countries where the locals approve of dancing on tabletops. Or dancing generally.
If you intend to risk being arrested by the local army, then it’s wise to remain calm & polite. Having your camera loaded up with photos of wildlife will mean you will look less like a Western Spy.
Road is a much more elastic term in many developing countries. It can merely mean a boggy surface lined by jungle. In which case, the purpose of your vehicle is to hold your bags while you get out and push the vehicle through the mud.
Road can also be a very temporary phenomena. In a good rain, the road will be washing away faster than your rate of progress. This gets even more exciting when you’re driving over mountains.
If you need to sleep somewhere rural, try to find a room with lots of geckos. Shake out your bedding first to evict any cockroaches. Then with luck, the geckos will take out all the cockroaches before they make it back to the safety of your bed.
It’s not all white labcoats and spreadsheets folks. Dec 02
No CommentsOne of the charms of working out how black markets in wildlife function, is that it provides opportunities for travel. There comes a time when lecturing students seems to be dragging on just a little bit longer and the marking hasn’t been tackled by the grading pixies (sigh). As the umpteenth memo and meeting reminder hits the email inbox, uncharitable thoughts about colleagues and administrators spring to mind. There sort of comes a point in time when, heck, you’d go to Outer Mongolia to count camel poo just to get a break.
One of the attractions of researching wildlife black markets, is that it does give you some chances to visit other parts of the world. A bit of travel, some new experiences, meeting new people- it doesn’t sound all bad. But this also means you’re going waay off the tourist tracks. And some of the people you meet, don’t really want to lay out the welcome mat.
In fact, the real downer to wildlife black markets is that sometimes, you bump into people who are really not interested in swapping business cards. These are the kinds of people that tend to wave guns at you, or leave bombs lying around. Scary people in other words. And ha, ha, when you’re in places where nobody-else knows where you are, it’s even scarier…
Although on balance, the local micro-organisms are probably the biggest long term threat.
The reason this all becomes a bit necessary, is that wildlife black markets are actually very hard to get data on. See, smugglers are very uncooperative. They don’t submit tax returns or compulsory statistical returns. So there’s really no official data. There’s lot of unofficial data- usually from the internet- which consists of stuff that people make up and circulate.
So sometimes the only way to really find out what is going on, is to go off and have a closer look. You’re not going to be able to download any of this stuff from a nice database. And there’s no way it can be done from the nice security of a lab. So, the important skills here are a) staying calm when people do wave guns at you and b) anticipating and avoiding situations where people wave guns at you. I have a strong preference for option b) ;)