Word: galster
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tiger-poaching crisis also showed the degree to which Russians can control an environmental problem when they have the resources. Russia has many dedicated game rangers who were thrown out of work by the collapse of the U.S.S.R. A group of international organizations led by American environmental investigator Steven Galster cobbled together the funding to put rangers back to work, and the newly formed patrols have been in the field since January 1994. The so-called Amba patrols have been working to disrupt poachers and their trade networks. Amba was given a boost this summer when Prime Minister Chernomyrdin issued...
...FURNISHED LIVING ROOM OF AN UDEGE house in southeastern Siberia while the owner tries to sell me a tiger skin and bones. My cover is that I am part of a group of American businessmen here for a week of bird watching. The other "bird watchers" consist of Steven Galster, an environmental investigator, Anthony Suau, a TIME photographer, and Sergei Shaitarov, a Russian environmentalist who works with Galster. My ludicrously rudimentary disguise consists of a borrowed pair of binoculars. If the tiger trader asks me to name one species of local bird, we are sunk...
...impromptu undercover operation was a piece of serendipity. Galster had come to the village of Krasny Yar to encourage the Udege to set up an anti poaching squad. Galster is the executive director of a private environmental-security organization called the Investigative Network, which helps fund the antipoaching team. Seeing a group of Americans in Krasny Yar, Leonid, the poacher/trader, had approached Sergei and offered his services as a hunting guide. After a short conversation it turned out that Leonid had a tiger skin and bones he wanted to sell. Sergei arranged for us to see the skin later...
...Galster, however, wasn't especially interested in any of those unsavory activities. As a co-director of the San Francisco -- based Endangered Species Project, he goes after the illicit trade in wildlife. And there is no shortage of work. Unsanctioned traffic in animals and animal parts -- birds of prey, tiger skins, tiger bones and bear gallbladders out of Russia; rhino horns and elephant ivory from Africa; whale meat into Japan; rare birds and snakes from South America -- has more than doubled in value since 1989, generating an estimated $6 billion in annual revenues. According to Interpol, the international police agency...
...report being issued this week by Galster's group makes disturbingly clear, such an agency could find itself overwhelmed as soon as it is created. The reason: not only have small-time wildlife smugglers become increasingly organized and professional, but -- more ominously -- traditional organized- crime operations have finally awakened to the huge profit potential of wildlife smuggling...