How many of them are left? How far do they fight the battle of extinction?  What are their abilities of survival? Is it fair on them?  The reference to “THEM” in  the above questions   are the other half animal species that share the niche on every aspect of survival on planet earth while the other  half, hunts them down. One species is over powering the other species  is defying the law of balance of nature and if it continues for long the game of survival of the fittest starts.

Hundreds of wild plants and animal are harvested every year for their medicinal value , for food or as pets. A lot of these activities of human intervention in the wild cause exploitation to other species as well as their natural habitat. It also poses risk of people engaging in activities against the law  for possessing  of  the plants and animals.

In Buengkan Province every Tuesday and Friday there is an street market open until noon.                   

Talat Lao

The market is called “Talat Lao."  A lot of the vendors are from Laos. The market has variety of products for sale from clothes to fresh vegetables, fruits, household items and wildlife products.  I was in real state of shock to see how freely some people had displayed wild animal products on sale. I always thought people had a black market system for dealing in animal product.  There were  police walking around but it seemed fine to sell them. Wild life trade seemed so normal in the locality.

The products range from Rhino horns of all sizes, bear claws, elephant tusks, animal hide, birds, flesh of wild boars, dead  squirrels,frogs,                                                                                         birds, and some dried lizard species.

The animal product is sold because of the medicinal value and as a  trophy. Rhino horns, elephant tusk and the bear tooth or claws are seen as  objects of good luck and as a gems. While some of the vendors did not let m touch it because I was with a camera but upon asking them about the products they did answer some of my questions. It seemed that some of the vendors did not even know if it were fake or original products because they bought it in Laos and were selling in Thailand where as some of the Vendors were very convincing that they were real(good salesman ship)

In any sense to sell animal product, real or fake it is ethically wrong.  Selling real wildlife product is Illegal in most countries, while the fake product equally poses threat to wildlife because it is encouraging wildlife trade. Animal print fashion trend should not be encouraged as well. The message these trends passes is wrongly interpreted by those who buy the product and those who sell. The ones who buy develops the urge own a real animal hide which is in fact tempting the people who sell to provide them because the cash flow high in this business. In this whole transaction the animals lose their live and in bigger scale they lose their entire species.