Bear poachers feed Asian black market

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The top dollars paid for elixirs extracted from bear organs and soup made with bear paws have been feeding an Asian black market that stretches from the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the District, Maryland, New York and South Korea.

Federal and state authorities recently disrupted the network when a three-year sting operation called "Operation Viper" resulted in nearly 700 charges against more than 100 people accused of trafficking poached black bears and illegally harvested ginseng roots.

Details of the charges are currently under seal in court, but a federal grand jury so far has indicted 38 persons, of whom two have been arrested. Future grand juries will examine more charges in coming months, officials said.

The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and the National Park Service ran the sting out of the Dixie Emporium, a sporting goods shop the two agencies set up in Elkton, Va., a few miles outside the national park.

An undercover agent acting as the shopkeeper infiltrated the market by purchasing whole bears or body parts. The shop would then sell the contraband to traffickers, who were trailed by other undercover agents as they peddled pieces of the animal in the District, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, California and South Korea.

More than $61,000 in illegal sales of bear and ginseng took place at the Dixie Emporium, said Shenandoah National Park spokeswoman Claire Come.

"We had a couple cases where customers asked for the whole bear, but in most cases they just asked for the [gall bladders] and paws," she said.

Mrs. Come said the brisk business at Dixie Emporium was just the tip of a multimillion-dollar black market in bear parts.

"Keep in mind that this was one small store in one small community," she said. "This business is immense. In Asian countries, where there is no control over this, they have nearly hunted the bear to extinction because of the demand."