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Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species

Regular Price: $18.00 |

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Customer Review

Brutal, but fair and insightful!
Bravo, Mr. Green! This meticulously researched book cuts right to the heart of the incredibly cruel and profitable trade in exotic species in the U.S. Although it's tough reading at times, this brutal but fair account rips the lid off a trade which can only exist if all parties conspire to look the other way regarding the origin and disposition of these unfortunate animals as they wend their way though the system. This book is SURE to ruffle more than a few feathers - particularly among those whose very livelihood depends on keeping this trade hidden from public view.
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October 7, 1999 (Bergenfield, NJ) | Helpful Votes: 15 | Rating: 5

Product Description

A vast and previously undisclosed underground economy exists in the United States. The products bought and sold: animals. In Animal Underworld, veteran investigative journalist Alan Green exposes the sleazy, sometimes illegal web of those who trade in rare and exotic creatures. Green and The Center for Public Integrity reveal which American zoos and amusement parks dump their "surplus" animals on the middlemen adept at secretly redirecting them into the private pet trade. We're taken to exotic-animal auctions, where the anonymous high bidders are often notorious dealers, hunting-ranch proprietors, and profit-minded charlatans masquerading as conservationists. We visit some of the nation's most prestigious universities and research laboratories, whose diseased monkeys are "laundered" through this same network of breeders and dealers until they finally reach the homes of unsuspecting pet owners. And we meet the men and women who make their living by skirting through loopholes in the law, or by ignoring the law altogether. For anyone who cares about animals; for pet owners, zoo-goers, wildlife conservationists, and animal welfare advocates, Animal Underworld is gripping, shocking reading.

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Zoos are places where animals are protected, kept safe from the ravages of the outside world and sheltered from extinction, right? Not necessarily, writes investigative reporter Alan Green, who takes his readers behind the bars in Animal Underworld to tell an unsettling tale of deception and cruelty.

That story opens at a zoo in northern Virginia, one of many such places around the United States in which black bears, once an exotic sight, have become a too-common commodity. Baby bears bring crowds, Green writes; unruly juveniles and listless adults do not. What happens to the bears who cannot contribute to the zoo's overhead? Animal sanctuaries are already overfull; individuals are not allowed to keep bears as pets without hard-to-obtain licenses; and bears raised in cages do not know how to fend for themselves in the wild. There is simply no place for them, Green writes, and the bears have economic worth only for their parts--the claws for jewelry, the flesh for restaurants, the paws for Asian apothecaries.

The nefarious means by which supposedly protected animals--many in danger of disappearing in the wild--are brought to market forms the heart of Green's disturbing report. Some of the country's most important zoos and museums turn up as villains in his pages, and readers will likely never visit such places again without wondering at the fate of the creatures that look out at them from the other side of the cage. --Gregory McNamee Top to learn more

The Only Good Pet Monkey is a Pet Sea Monkey
There is no doubt that there is a huge, lucrative, underground trade in exotics, and that many of the people involved in it are unethical scumbags. Of course, not ALL individuals who own exotic pets are nasty: some of them are conscientious and care enough to be well-informed about the species they choose to own.But the author of this book provides an important service to the public. Green sheds light into the dark corners of the exotics business, part of which involves shuffling zoo and research animals to canned hunt facilities or roadside petting zoos. It all works through middlemen who assure legitimate keepers that their surplus animals are going to qualified handlers, when in fact they are often laundered through pet auctions or given to animal collectors who abandon them at the first sign of difficult behavior or ill health.Take monkeys and apes. They're cute and smart, but mishandling can create a strong, deranged primate that will pose very real risks to...
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January 16, 2004 (Morgan Park, Chicago IL USA) | Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 4

Disturbing, but solution is not practical
I have read most of this book. I volunteer at the same zoo.I say I've only read most of the book because I found some parts so disturbing that I had to stop reading. The conditions of animals or the fact that some animals came from big animal parks only to be killed in canned hunts or the fact that some animals were trained to give a paw through a cage only to have the paw cut off and the animal bleed to death was too much for me to take.So I've read most of the book and took away the horrifying message that not all zoos are telling you the truth. So I started asking detailed questions at the zoo I volunteer at (same one in the book that Mr. Green volunteered for and coincidentally the house right next to the one he volunteered in). When I started in 2000, I brought up my concerns about the animals that were being shipped all over the place and being taken in to the house. Since that time and since this book was published the Species Survival Plan and AZA...
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January 30, 2007 (Leesburg, VA United States) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 4

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Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species

Regular Price: $18.00 |

Customer Review

October 7, 1999 (Bergenfield, NJ) | Helpful Votes: 15 | Rating: 5

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January 16, 2004 (Morgan Park, Chicago IL USA) | Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 4

January 30, 2007 (Leesburg, VA United States) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 4

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Little Big Bend: Common, Uncommon, and Rare Plants of Big Bend National Park (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest)

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Reviewing: "Little Big Bend"
Devoted to the plants of Big Bend National Park this book also captures the stark beauty of the park. After brief sections on the preface, acknowledgement and design of the book, the book opens by explaining the environment in the short chapter headed, "Big Bend, The Land of Extremes." Along with rainfall rate, temperature extremes, elevation changes of thousands of feet, and other facts of interest the author also writes of the ecological diversity and the human influence on the park from the earliest hunters to modern time as well as the history of park itself.That is followed by a brief section on how plants are named and a section on plants helpfully organized under the various family names. Page numbers are also noted for the family plant names making it easier for readers to find the pages grouped together for a certain family plant name. Page 35 begins the actual heart if the book with a plant name, a close up color photograph and an easy to read and...
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July 7, 2008 (Plano, Texas) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

Six Stars
Big Bend National Park, which is located in southwest Texas along the Mexican border, contains more than 800,000 acres (which is larger than the state of Rhode Island). Due to its unique location, this park is sometimes referred to as three parks in one because it includes mountain, desert, and river environments. A short drive can take you from the Rio Grande River and its canyons, to a mile high mountain basin or the Chihuahuan desert. As a result, plant life within Big Bend National Park is highly diverse.While book does contain a lot of information on the many of the common plants found in the park, the book primary focus is to provide information on those plants that are often overlooked by other guidebooks. Each of the hundreds of plants featured in the book has at least one high resolution photograph that accompanies the text that allows the reader/adventurer to easily identify the plant and its flowers.Finally, unlike many guide books which fit into...
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June 24, 2008 (Houston, TX United States) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

Works for me
Exceptional book for the southwest plant lover. Not an exhaustive study of all the plants in that area but a nice crisp focus on exceptional, interesting or the unusual ones. Photography is dead on the money. Highly recommended.
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May 13, 2008 (Texas) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

Product Description

Plant life in Big Bend National Park is incredibly diverse. The wide range of habitats within the parkdesert, foothills, mountains and moist woodlands, river canyons and floodplainas well as the Big Bend’s three major blooming seasons of spring, summer, and fallguarantee a stunning show of botanical variety throughout the year. Little Big Bend is not a traditional guide to the area’s common plants. Although it features many species that are characteristic of the Chihuahuan Desert environment, species such as orchids are also included precisely because they are uncommon or rare and therefore a special thrill to find. Plants not seen in other wildflower guides, or those with a limited geographic range that the reader will less likely encounter elsewhere, are pictured here. This guide describes 109 species found in the United States only in Trans-Pecos Texas; 62 of these occur only in the Big Bend portion of the Trans-Pecos, and 24 of them only within Big Bend National Park. Of the 252 featured species, 71 are considered sensitive plants”; in Texas, 28 are classified as critically imperiled, 18 as imperiled, and 25 as vulnerable. The emphasis of this book is on the little in the Big Bend, the overlooked small plants or inconspicuous tiny flowers of larger plants that so often go unnoticed. In a landscape so immense, these plants may be right before our eyes but seldom seen, or they may be tucked away and quite difficult to find. Here, in glowing photographs and insightful text, Roy Morey has brought them to light.

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Rare Exotic Animals

The oryx you'll see have a more fragile, thinner horn and quite often you'll see one with a broken horn. We've been, I've been trying to do it for years," said Archer. They're still kind of shy," said Heidi Crosky, a guide at Fort Chiswell Animal Park. We've been trying to get them since we opened in 2004, it's just been a long process," said Crosky. ve gotten along good with the other animals.

The people who get caught in the illegal arena of bartering, buying and selling prohibited wildlife are blinded by the promise of big profits while animal collectors who find these animals irresistible only think of themselves. According to Bird Life International , before a wild bird is caught and sold as a pet, at least 10 birds perish due to the process of trapping. "Despite efforts made by the authorities to apprehend illegal traders of threatened and endangered wildlife, the fact remains that illegal trading of endangered animals occur even in the most conspicuous places like the Aranque and Cartimar... These animals are said to be in demand among animal collectors. The seized animals were discovered hidden under other animal enclosures. Bird Life International reveals that there is rampant trapping of birds in the mid-Luzon mountain range at Dalton Pass, Nueva Vizcaya and within the vicinity of Mount Pulag National Park and Mount Data National Park in Northern Luzon. If the captured bird is rearing chicks that are too young to sell, the baby birds are left to fend for themselves and eventually die from starvation. Sadly, there are people who capitalize on trading endangered and threatened wildlife because of the demand for rare and peculiar pets. Overhunting Philippine wild animals for the purpose of having them as pets, ornaments or medicines can cause its number in the wild to dwindle significantly. Exotic birds are of one of the most in demand wildlife in the black market.

The move to give the animals full protection under the federal Endangered Species Act is being praised by animal-rights groups that abhor such hunts and has upset the ranchers whose efforts have led to a rise in the numbers of those exotic animals. FORT WORTH (AP) - For years, hundreds of Texas ranchers have made big money on exotic antelopes, with hunters paying up to $10,000 to bag just one dama gazelle, a rare animal with short horns curving outward. Ranchers allowed just 10-15 percent of their herds to be killed each year, said Seale, who has a South Texas ranch with exotic animals. Now the rule is being enforced so the animals won’t be killed in “canned hunts,” said Priscilla Feral, president of the Connecticut-based Friends of Animals that successfully challenged that exemption. Starting Wednesday, however, the U. S. government will stop allowing anyone to hunt the dama gazelle or two other exotic antelopes native to Africa, the addax and the scimitar-horned oryx — unless ranchers obtain a permit. The dama gazelle is the rarest of the three, but hunters still shelled out big bucks for the others — up to $5,000 for the chance to bag a scimitar-horned oryx and $7,000 for an addax, known for its long, thin, spiral-shaped horns. But prices have dropped by up to 40 percent and will drop an additional 50 percent after Wednesday, said Charly Seale, executive director of the Texas-based Exotic Wildlife Association. But ranchers — even those with other exotic animals that are not affected by the rule — say they’re left with few options.

In my February 15 commentary “ Owning Exotic Animals Remains Legal in Ohio ,” I wrote, in part: “The way I read that language, legislation recommended by the study group would not protect animals in Ohio from being forced into captivity,... On November 30, 2011, the above-mentioned study committee recommended a ban on the “ownership or possession of restricted species … unless the owner meets the listed and limited exceptions outlined for zoos, research facilities, circuses, or are... Ted Strickland, that at very least would have prohibited Mr. Thompson — who’d been convicted in 2005 of animal cruelty — from owning “dangerous wild animals. … Stapleton said the need for sanctuaries like his is a legacy of Ohio’s unregulated exotic animal trade, where private individuals have for years bought captive-bred lion, tiger and bear cubs as pets at auctions around the state. It’s been nearly six months since the streets of Zanesville, Ohio, ran red with the blood of dozens of so-called “exotic animals,” after Terry Thompson released them from his state-sanctioned concentration camp and into policemen’s gun sights. Troy Balderson wrote in a December 8, 2011, statement : “I respectfully disagree with their recommendation to fully ban exotic animal ownership throughout Ohio. In the hours and days that followed the October 18, 2011, Zanesville Massacre, we heard a great deal about the need for lawmakers to rethink the state’s permissiveness with regard to exotic-animal “ownership.

Rare Exotic Animals News

New safeguard poised to change exotic game hunting in Texas

By Farzad Mashhood BLANCO COUNTY — To keep a rare African species of antelope alive, J. David Bamberger says he's going to need to let it be hunted. Bamberger, who is the president and founder of a Hill Country ranch preserve bearing his last name,
Quandary on Texas ranch: Can you protect rare species by hunting it?

Alongside the antelope exist exotic animals of every stripe, including zebra, African bongos, kangaroo and regal rare Pere David's deer, which are extinct in the wild. This particular exotic 3000-acre ranch, like many in Texas, is for sport hunting,
Owners snarl at exotic animal bill

James Miller/The photos MARION - Mike Stapleton said Senate Bill 310 is out to make a criminal of him and other owners of "exotic" animals, and that's not fair. Stapleton operates Paw's & Claws Animal Sanctuary in southern Marion County,