America Has A Thing For Hippo Parts

May 9, 2022 5:24 AM

Why a strange obsession with hippo teeth, skin and bones might cause the U.S. to classify them as endangered.
posted by Etrigan (6 comments total)

I don’t like this article. It doesn’t provide proper context - hippopotamuses are vulnerable under the iucn, which means they already do have protection in the US under CITES.

Vulnerable is the lowest threshold in the threatened species category, meaning it could be a problem if we aren’t careful; hence regulated trade.

It also just doesn’t cover the basics like the population, either; so it doesn’t give context to the numbers imported. I am wondering a tiny bit why this is even in fivethirtyeight, given the lack of data.

But I’m also not a fan of Centers for Biological Diversity, one of the groups behind the petition. They often use emotional appeal when they petition for changes, and often conflate popular topics in the media to unrelated pushes for protections in certain species.

And boy, they cherry-pick their data. I wrote an article about some potential changes to the law in Florida surrounding dwarf seahorses Hippocampus zosterae, and the information they provided to Florida’s fish and wildlife only included research suggestive of population isolation, while leaving out research papers that showed exchanges between populations. I remember communicating with someone at the fws office there, and she was genuinely surprised there was contradicting research and I ended up providing those papers.

I am not saying they don’t need protection. But in my experience, one of the groups pushing this leans hard on the public’s lack of understanding and is shady about the way they push for changes to law. They also don’t seem to have much concern who it effects in terms of livelihood- my limited experience is in paying attention to conservation groups that work with fish and other aquatic species. Conservation groups that I respect will look at who is utilizing and why; and attempt to balance the need for protecting a species with the livelihoods of the people that utilize those species.

Given the relatively small number of imported hippo parts, it strikes me as it’s not a huge industry here.

I don’t know if they should or should not be listed under the ESA, and this article only gets my hackles up.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:34 AM on May 9, 2022 [6 favorites]

Interesting about the seahorses, but having a litigation advocacy strategy is not very unusual for environmental groups in the United States. I don't think you'd find a group that practices science like a university does-- conservation organizations are generally run by attorneys.

If we had science-based policy in the United States, we'd be much farther along on the climate issues than we are today.

Conservation is quite partisan, even in Florida, legislature s are likely to advocate for property, over laws like ESA.

Is there a review paper synthesizing the support for different hypotheses on seahorse isolation?
posted by eustatic at 6:56 AM on May 9, 2022

Eustatic, I honestly don't remember, this back in 2015 and I don't remember the specifics well. I am not in any formal academia, just a huge nerd on some topics. I wrote the article on consignment for an aquarium-centric magazine that had a heavy conservation bias. I only approach the topic from the perspective of a very intense interest, though I've spoken with a number of people involved in research and conservation in the past so know a bit about how the sausage is made, including those based or doing/have done work in Florida.

And yes, it was very political. In fact, one of the criticisms was that it targeted a very small slice of the issue that would have negligible impact, collection for the aquarium industry, while neglecting the bigger threats which was largely habitat destruction and pollution (and sometimes habitat destruction by pollution) because there would have been a much bigger push back from bigger industries.

(I am no longer active in that area of interest, not out of lack of love but out of too many life stressors keeping me from engaging. Ugh, though, writing this out, I do miss it.)

As for hippos, I skimmed the petition put out by the Center for Biological Diversity, and the first issue that jumped out to me was that they were trying to conflate hippo parts with total individual animals killed.

Yes, they do explain that is what they are doing, but the wording is tricky, and they're using that estimate to dispute trade data without proving a reason why they they think that. I'd argue their choice of the word "specimen" is used intentionally to confused the issue. They are technically correct, but more often in lay use, specimen is going to be used to describe a whole organism.

Second point here is that overall, the data they use shows shows that global trade is declining. But the hippo population remains steady. There was one anomalous year in 2018, but it seem that there is consensus that was an anomaly.

Lastly, its not clear this will actually help, as the issues that actually impact hippos are more clearly due to habitat loss and human-hippo interactions.

Reiterating that I was skimming, I probably missed a lot (sigh). My issue here is not that they don't necessarily need broader protection, but that the approach is deceptive and the article itself seems like a puff piece. If anything, my concern is that being deceptive like this hinders overall conservation efforts across the board, and opens the door for anti-conservation groups and political views to poke holes in the efforts. My experiences with other conservation groups, and especially the conservationists and researchers is that they were very concerned about accurate data for this reason (and I'm sure out of respect for their own and their colleagues work).

Writing this out, though, I realized that this issue seems to be similar to what I described above in the seahorse issue. An issue that is actually small enough that there likely won't be a lot of pro-hippo part pushback to fight this. I do actually credit the US FWS for doing a decent job of trying to make science based decisions so hoping they slap this down out of principle as hippos are already protected in the US by trade regulation.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 7:37 AM on May 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

So I read the article, and I'm still uncertain where the demand for hippo parts is coming from. The article says that it's mostly their skin and teeth that are in demand, but then speculates that people might be buying hippopotamus leather without knowing it. Which is weird, because it's hard to believe that it would be cheaper than, you know, regular bovine-hide leather that's produced in rather prodigious quantity all over the Western hemisphere.

So where's this stuff all going? Is it all going for weird boots? Who's wearing these boots, anyway? I've never seen a pair of hippo-leather boots for sale, or even heard of such a thing. It seems like it must be a fairly niche product. Is the article dancing around some sort of political-correctness concern, like their use by a particular subculture or ethnic group? (E.g. like the use of many endangered Asian species by "traditional" Chinese "medicine".)

I guess I now know to keep an eye out for such things, but it's just a bit odd. I feel like there's more of a story here, but I'm not sure what it is.

But since we're here and talking about leather... what's the latest state of the art in non-animal leather substitutes? Really the only leather products I use are boots/shoes and belts, and I haven't found many terrific substitutes for animal leather for either. (Belts would be the easier one, but I've yet to find a non-leather belt that has the right amount of stiffness and give; the fabric belts I've had either roll/curl, or make me look like I'm about to storm the Capitol as soon as I can find my plate carrier.) Shoes and boots are even harder; most non-leather boots seem to basically be disposable items incapable of being repaired. I've never seen a Goodyear welt on anything other than leather footwear. It seems like as a civilization we should have figured this out by now, but maybe not. And I guess as long as we're still eating beef by the ton, there's a significant supply of bovine leather around that we might as well use.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:08 AM on May 9, 2022

Meanwhile in Colombia, they are trafficking in whole hippos , even as they are causing environmental problems.
posted by TedW at 11:22 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

As a custom knifemaker, I've seen hippo ivory for sale, and just checked the usual suspects to see if it's still being sold as a knife handle material. Looks like it isn't being sold on the major sites, but a check of some private sales sites shows its out there, as is bone and leather. I've worked mammoth ivory, which is already extinct and easy to tell from elephant, and boar ivory, and never want to again -- it stinks and the dust is particularly irritating. It looks like the general consensus on forums is that when you can find it, it is softer than most other non-fossilized ivory, tends to crack and so needs to be stabilized, and is mostly valued for its rarity rather than beauty or utility.
posted by Blackanvil at 1:15 PM on May 9, 2022 [3 favorites]