Book Reviews

Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species

Public Affairs, 272 pp., $25

Although heroes do emerge in Alan Green's catalog of wrongs, Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species, including the for-profit Austin Zoo, a sanctuary for embattled beasts on the outskirts of town, the reader will find mostly villains in this report. Untangling the threads of the disappearances of thousands of animals, Green struggles mightily -- and manages barely -- to avoid coming across as a rabid animal rights activist.

But with monkeys and tigers by the thousands being kept by private owners in the U.S., while in many cases going extinct in the wild, it's little wonder Green expects us to be upset by what he has seen. Green takes aim at many targets as he builds his argument that most American zoos are malfeasance-riddled affairs undermining their professed attempts to protect wildlife on a global scale. Green's indictment of beloved institutions, such as the Bronx Zoo and the National Zoo in Washington D.C., is eye-opening and disturbing. From the outset, Green lays out a map of how unchecked breeding of monkeys, giraffes and other exotic ungulates, and big cats helps foster a black market for rare and exotic species in which no one is held accountable for these animals' fate. The author does not reserve his scorn for just the zookeepers and animal traders that profit from the trade in exotic animals -- the book is littered with tales of corporate hypocrisy and official ineptitude.

But amidst these well-documented accusations and allegations, which pile up page after page, one gets the sense that Green's reportorial efforts might be better served if he had given in to the passion wrought by this impulse to advocacy. There are some fundamental questions concerning human-animal relationships which simply go unasked. For instance, Green accepts at face value that zoos can play an important role in the conservation of certain species, but his anecdotes tend to celebrate the individualism of the animals he documents. Wildlife advocates have long debated whether an individual animals' rights should be given weight when it comes to widespread concern over species' survival.

In Animal Underworld, both sides of this equation are given equal heft. The central conundrum, however, remains unanswered. In a single breath, Green attacks zookeepers for not doing their utmost to counteract mankind's crushing impact on biodiversity then goes on to play the reader's heartstrings by telling sad tales of former zoo darlings abandoned and left for dead. Although such treatment is sickening, Green fails to illustrate whether these deaths are going to diminish the number of species found in the jungles of Africa, South America, and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, Green argues evocatively concerning the need to reform the way America handles the booming trade in exotic animals -- and the complicity of the nation's leading zoos in this matter is particularly disturbing. So while the book may fail as an ethical treatise on the problem of America's black market, it offers a sound moral lesson: Wildlife must be protected not just from exotic pet-shop owners and game ranches but, in some cases, from the entities we most trust with their welfare. We can only hope that the right people ultimately get the message.