BLAGOVESHCHENSK, Russia, June 15 (UPI) -- Siberia's wildlife is being slaughtered to satisfy vast demand for exotic animal parts from China, conservationists say.
"China is a vacuum cleaner for Siberian wildlife," Aleksei Vaisman of Traffic Europe-Russia, which monitors trade in wild animals, told The New York Times.
At a border crossing at Blagoveshchensk Tuesday, Russian customs agents seized 1,041 bear paws, 26 elk lips, lynx fur and five tusks from the extinct woolly mammoth.
The illicit cargo was found when a dog sniffed out a secret compartment in an apparently empty Chinese truck.
Smuggling has exploded in Russia's Far East now that the long border with China, closed for decades, is open for travel and trade.
The Chinese consider bear paws a ritual dish and elk lips a delicacy. Bear gallbladders, frogs, deer antlers, the genitals of spotted deer and the bones of highly endangered Amur tigers are sought for medicinal or aphrodisiac properties.
Siberia's permafrost holds the remains of an estimated 150 million mammoths from the Ice Age. The tusks emerge in the spring thaw and are exported -- usually legally -- to Asia to be carved into personal stamps.
