Checking at the restaurant, functional forces discovered that the menu introduced many dishes made from sparrows, ambarella, water chicken, cu bird, and mackerel.
The shop owner was then fined 5.1 million VND for advertising to trade in forest animals of illegal origin.
The fine amount is not large, but the way of detecting and handling the case raises a matter of concern in protecting wild birds.
That is, for a long time, when talking about preventing wild bird hunting, we often think of fields densely packed with nets, traps set in bushes or loudspeakers playing bird sounds to lure.
Every bird migration season, forest rangers in many localities have to launch campaigns to remove thousands of traps, seize fake nets, storks, and loudspeakers.
Those things are very necessary, but removing a trap today, tomorrow people can place another trap if wild birds are still sold, there are still shops buying and there are still diners ordering dishes. Because behind each trap there is always a consumption market.
Bird hunters are not just for bringing them home to eat. Birds are collected, transported, sold at markets, supplied to eateries and restaurants and then become dishes introduced as a "specialty".
Therefore, to limit hunting, in addition to handling trappers, it is necessary to reduce demand at the end of the chain.
A restaurant that does not buy wild birds will make the collector lose a customer. Many restaurants also do not buy, the output will be narrowed. And when consumers no longer consider wild birds as food to look for, pre-order or show off at the drinking table, the natural hunting motivation will decrease.
The incident in Hue also shows another notable management method, which is that functional agencies monitor advertising and trading of wildlife on social networks.
Today, sellers do not necessarily have to display birds in the market. Just need a Facebook account, a few photos and a phone number to find customers. Restaurants can also use social networks to advertise dishes that are considered strange to attract diners.
Therefore, cyberspace also needs to become a regular area for functional forces in detecting, verifying and handling acts of buying and selling, advertising wild animals against regulations.
Finally, more importantly, it is still changing consumer habits.
Protecting wild birds is not just a private story of functional agencies. It is a common story, associated with the choice of each restaurant when deciding what dish to put on the menu and of each diner when deciding what dish to order on the table. To make the fields less bird-trapy, first of all, it must start from making wild bird dishes disappear from the menu and table.
