See The Last Clouded Leopard: WildAid’s Wildlife Conservation Goes After The Poachers

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Outside Magazine May 2004

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See the Last Clouded Leopard (Cont.)


	Cold-irons-bound: Thai authorities frequently confiscate Asian black bears during animal-trafficking raids; WildAid field director Tim Redford designed these holding pens at the Banglamung Wildlife Center, outside Pattaya. "We know there are illegal restaurants where you can eat bear meat," says Galster, pictured here. (James Nachtwey)

GALSTER FIRST CAME UP WITH the prototype for WildAid's current programs in 1993, on an excursion to Vladivostok to help disrupt a Siberian-tiger-trafficking ring.

When he arrived in the Russian Far East on behalf of the Tiger Trust, a nongovernmental organization based in New Delhi that protects tigers in India, it was, he says, "virtually open season on wildlife." Biologists estimated that there were no more than 250 Siberian tigers left in the wild; dozens were being killed each year by poachers who hunted on foot, by car, and by helicopter. Galster assembled and trained three five-man patrols made up of Afghan-war veterans and park rangers. The teams were deployed to track tiger hunters in the forest and use hidden cameras to record transactions in the city. Thanks to the success of Galster's original anti-poaching units, as well as a dozen additional units now funded by a consortium including the World Wildlife Fund, the Siberian tiger population has risen to 400.

When Glaster hit Russia's Far East, it was "open season on wildlife." Now, with, the help of WildAid's anti-poaching units, the number of Siberian Tigers has increased from 250 to roughly 400.

Unfortunately, the hunters never disappeared, as Galster discovered in April 2000 when he went back to Vladivostok to renew WildAid's contracts with the Phoenix Fund, an umbrella group he helped establish that funnels money to smaller, non-governmental species-protection outfits in Russia. He intended to stay only a few days, but one of the anti-poaching teams he'd organized had identified a rogue policeman from the neighboring town of Ussurisk, 40 miles to the north, who was moving tiger and bear parts to a Chinese mobster across the border in Jilin province. The Vladivostok police alleged that the Chinese dealer had paid off the cop, Vladimir Korolev, to murder a competitor. Now they wanted Galster to pose as an American buyer, wear a wire, and catch Korolev in an illegal transaction.

Galster couldn't refuse. Sergei Bereznuk, director of the Phoenix Fund, posed as his assistant. After making contact with Korolev, the men drove to Ussurisk in the middle of the night to meet him. They were wired with old Soviet listening devices that transmitted to a backup team of cops and government intelligence agents perched in a nearby van.

"The cop finally pulled up, and I could see he was a big fat guy driving an old, crappy Toyota," Galster recalls. "He took us across town to an empty safe house and showed us some tiger skins. They were huge. All I was thinking was, This is such great stuff! I hope my camera doesn't malfunction."

It didn't. On the grainy video, Korolev unrolls his wares and spreads them on the floor: skins from two massive adult male tigers, with their jaws frozen in wide snarls. Galster kneels down to examine them.

"How much tiger skins you need?" Korolev asks, with Bereznuk translating. "How much length? [I] can do as much as you want."

"As many skins as I want?" Galster asks.

"Yes, as many skins," comes the answer. "What coat you want? Winter or summer?"

Galster opted for summer, and the two agreed on a price of $3,000 for two skins, plus another $100 as a delivery fee. Delivery was key; the undercover team needed to get the trafficker back to their Vladivostok jurisdiction to arrest him. Galster gave Korolev $100, and they left in two cars for the Vladivostok Hotel, where Galster was staying.

That's when the ancient Soviet transmitters the pair were wearing blinked out, cutting them off from their colleagues in the van. "We didn't have $3,000 in cash to pay this guy off, so we were getting nervous," Galster says. "Then we got back to the hotel and—shit!—there was a car from the undercover team in the parking lot that he might have recognized." Galster and Bereznuk told the rogue cop they were going upstairs to fetch his money, but when Korolev saw some cops in the lobby greeting them familiarly, he revved up his car and bolted—with the skins. Luckily, the backup team was able to pull him over and make an arrest.

During a hearing held in a Vladivostok court in November 2000, Korolev testified that the skins in his trunk didn't belong to him. Despite Galster's damning video, he avoided jail time. But the operation still had a major impact: The skins were confiscated, and the Ussurisk police later fired Korolev. In a country where policemen are viewed as untouchable because they often live up to their reputation for corruption and ruthlessness, the arrest made national news.

"The biggest deal was the publicity," recalls Bereznuk, speaking from his Vladivostok office. "The trafficker wasn't just an ordinary cop. He had been in charge of a department that surveilled foreigners. That he was fired sent a big message to some traffickers: Even high-level bureaucrats could be caught and disgraced.

"Steve was one of the first foreigners I'd ever met in the flesh," Bereznuk adds. "I watched him go out on patrols, ask a lot of questions, raise money for us, volunteer his time to other groups, analyze the poaching situation, develop a solution, and personally implement it. He wasn't a huge, disinterested investor throwing money at us from abroad. He was involved on the ground. That's when I decided he is not your average American."

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