Why is Amazonian wildlife turning up at a Bangkok market?

Filed 22h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Amazing Plan

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: UNCTAD · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

At Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, vendors sell hundreds of species pulled from jungles and rivers worldwide, including African bush babies, South American marmosets and capuchins, and Amazonian fish, often crammed into cages in temperatures above 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Conservationists tracking the market say South American species have surged noticeably in the past two years, with new arrivals like coatis and maras showing up regularly. Much of this trade rides on fraudulent permits that launder animals protected in their home countries into apparently legal shipments bound for Southeast Asia.

A 2024 electrical fire killed more than 1,000 animals in the market's pet zone, prompting brief public outrage before vendors returned, reportedly with encouragement from Bangkok's governor to keep buying. Thailand's wildlife department did not respond to a request for comment on its enforcement efforts.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A market survives a fire that kills a thousand animals and comes back bigger, with the city's own governor cheering on the shoppers. That is not an oversight, that is a business model with official blessing. When the agency in charge of stopping this will not even pick up the phone, you already know who is really running the alleys of Chatuchak.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Amazing Plan · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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