“Some of these poachers are as blatant as Seventh Avenue hookers. Leave a business card at a hunting lodge saying you want to buy bear gal , they’l phone you right back.”
Ricky Don Dorton. Wilderness Quest. Cocaine. Bears. Exotic birds. Random particles of thought were again seeking each other’s company in my head.
“How do these rings operate?”
“Nothing complex. Contact is made by a poacher via word of mouth or a phone cal to a buyer. The buyer meets the poacher in a parking lot, maybe at an isolated location, and the transaction is made. Poacher gets thirty-five, maybe fifty bucks for each gal , middleman gets seventy-five to a hundred. Street value skyrockets in Asia.”
“Where do the gal s leave the country?”
“A lot traffics through Maine, since that’s one of the few states where it’s legal to sel black bear gal s to Asia. But, again, it’s il egal to sel bear parts kil ed in North Carolina inanystate. Lately Atlanta’s become a big gateway.”
“How are the gal s preserved?”
“Poacher freezes them intact ASAP outta the bear.”
“And then?”
“He turns them over to his Asian contact. Since freshness determines value, most gal s are dried in the destination city. But not always. Some Asian contacts do their drying in the United States so they can transport larger quantities. A gal is about the size of a human fist and weighs less than a pound.
Drying shrinks it to a third that size.”
“How is it done?”
“Nothing high-tech. The gal is tied with monofilament line and hung over a low heat. Slow drying is important. If a gal is dried too fast, the bile is ruined.”
“How are they smuggled out?”
“Again, no mind-bender. Most are transported in carry-on luggage. If the gal s are spotted on a security scanner, the carrier claims he’s bringing dried fruit to his mama. Some grind the gal s up and put them in whiskey.”
“Less risky than smuggling drugs,” I said.
“And very lucrative. A single preserved gal usual y brings about five thousand dol ars in Korea, but prize gal s have sold for as much as ten thousand.
That’s U.S greenbacks we’re talking.”
I was stunned.
“Ever hear of CITES?” Zamzow asked.
“Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.” That was the second reference in as many days.
“Bear gal s have been classified under Appendix Two.”
“There are bears in Asia. Why come al the way to North America for gal ?”
“Al five Asian bear species, the sun, sloth, Asiatic black, brown, and giant panda are threatened. Only fifty thousand bears are thought to be left in the wild in Asia, from India al the way across to China and down into Southeast Asia.”
“Because of the demand for bile.”
“With the exception of the giant panda, bears are the only mammals that produce significant amounts of ursodeoxycholic acid, or UCDA.”