Written by Michele Roldán-Shaw
In the remotest corners of the planet, wild places where rules can be hard to enforce, criminals are going about a very lucrative work. They stop at nothing, repent for nothing, and are consumed by what they seek. Once they succeed, they will traffic shimmering priceless beauties around the globe, collecting vast sums at the expense of the innocent. It may very well be the most low-down racket you've never heard of... The illegal butterfly trade.
Don't laugh—this is serious business. An estimated $200 million per year is at stake on a black market of cutthroat dealers and fanatical collectors. In their quest to possess the rarest and most valuable specimens on the planet—dead and mounted elegantly—they are wreaking havoc on endangered butterfly populations, even pushing them to extinction. Who cares about insects? some folks might say; but sacrificing even the most insignificant creature in the name of greed shows a blatant disregard for Creation, and if there's a true danger here it's the risk of laying waste to the only home we have.
This is the backdrop to a sordid tale chronicled by Jessica Speart in her book Winged Obsession. In it she documents the case of Yoshi Kojima, a Japanese dealer who had eluded authorities for years, and the rookie lawman determined to bring him down.
Ultimately, Jessica herself gets wrapped up in a web of deception, living a double-life for the sake of the story.
"It was this amazing three-year undercover case, the ultimate game of cat-and-mouse," she says. "Butterfly smugglers are an underground mafia, and Yoshi was the kingpin of his trade, a sort of one-man environmental wrecking ball. I wanted to understand him."
Jessica is a rather interesting character herself. She used to be an actress, but after leaving a certain soap opera, she got a wild hair and put all her money in a trip to Africa. She came back hyped-up on wildlife, particularly endangered species; yet she didn't want to be a vet, so how could she reinvent herself? Almost by accident she became a writer, and started freelancing for wildlife and conservation magazines. Over the years she developed a good working relationship with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, convincing agents to let her tag along on undercover cases. "They got a kick out of this girl who would slog through bayous and do all these crazy things to get a story," she said. "I knew what they were up against—not only smugglers, but the politics within their own bureau—and so I became a voice for them."
This led to the creation of a fictional protagonist, a female Fish and Wildlife Agent who tackles exotic reptile rings, psychotic grizzly killers and the Russian mob in a set of fast-paced mystery novels. After ten books Jessica brought the series to a close, and was casting about for something to do when she learned of the Yoshi case. Right away it struck her as stranger and more riveting than any work of fiction: an inexperienced Fish and Wildlife Agent named Ed Newcomer goes undercover by posing as a naïve aspiring collector. He manages to gain Yoshi's confidences, and soon finds himself being groomed for the illicit trade. After the case is nearly blown twice—at one point Yoshi actually places an anonymous call to the Fish & Wildlife Department trying to turn Newcomer in, believing that his protégé has betrayed him and become a competitor—it comes to light that there is an even more scintillating aspect to the whole thing. Yoshi is gay and has fallen for Newcomer, a weakness that eventually lures him back into the trap.
"After Yoshi went to prison, everyone wanted to interview him because it was such a wacky, twisted story," Jessica said. "I knew I had to try to meet him, but no writer had been able to do it. So I decided to do exactly what I did in my mystery books: go undercover. I took on a new identity, went to Japan without knowing anyone, and managed to 'bump into' Yoshi. Pretty soon I became his new best friend."
At first she wrestled with guilt about her hidden intentions to expose him; after all, he'd been very kind to her in Japan. But when it became clear he wanted to embroil her in sinister activities the same way he had Newcomer, she no longer felt bad. "I thought I had been using him, but in actuality he was using me," she said. "I knew he was still in the illegal trade and that he was never going to change."
So she learned all about Yoshi, and the cunning ways he operated. He traveled the world in search of prize specimens, and collected eggs he would later rear in captivity. This is a common practice: hunters look for the butterflies' food plants, sometimes going so far as to rip up as many as possible so that there won't be any left for their competition. Perhaps this isn't such a big deal with common species, but as far as endangered butterflies are concerned it's incredibly destructive. The Queen Alexandria, a beautiful blue and yellow butterfly pictured on the cover of Jessica's book, is found in the jungles of Papua New Guinea and is the largest species on earth. At the time Jessica was writing, a pair of them fetched anywhere from $8,500 to $10,000. In fact they are so highly sought after, it is rumored that there are secret vaults in Japan containing caches of Queen Alexandrias, the idea being that when they go extinct their value will skyrocket. That's how deep these people get.
"You can be obsessed with anything," Jessica says. "Cars, Tiffany lamps, whatever. And these butterfly collectors become so obsessed, it's like nothing else matters. I heard stories of guys whose marriages fell apart, or who lost their jobs because at a certain time of year they ran to Arizona, Death Valley, wherever. But there's always that next butterfly they need to get."
Jessica learned a lot about obsession, and herself, while working on this book. She'd always known that she was prone to becoming a little obsessed with the things she worked on; in the Yoshi case, no matter how many leads she followed or how many people she tracked down, she still had to keep digging more and more. "I wanted to know Yoshi inside and out," she said. "Not only is the book about Newcomer's obsession with this case, and Yoshi's obsession with butterflies, it's about what became my obsession with getting to Yoshi."
The book's done now; Jessica has moved on. But Yoshi—as far as anyone knows, he's still in Japan and he's still working. He hasn't been in touch with Jessica since publication of her book, but she's certain he knows about it. He must feel angry and embarrassed, she reasons, since it betrays a lot of very personal information about him. On the other hand, he had always considered himself the rock star of the butterfly world, and this makes him an even larger character. (Could there be a movie in the works?) But in the end there is a moral to the story, and it has nothing to do with egos or infatuations.
"One of the things people have said to me is 'Butterflies—who cares? What's the big deal?'" Jessica says. "But how do we decide what's worth saving, and what's okay to wipe off the face of the earth? It doesn't matter whether it's an elephant, a rhino, a gorilla or a honeybee—even something as small as a butterfly causes a ripple. They are an indicator species to the health of the planet, and we need to stop and think about what we're doing. We need to think about our greed."
Jessica Speart will be giving a presentation on the illegal endangered species trade, including butterfly smuggling, at Hilton Head's Coastal Discovery Museum on January 25th from 3-4 p.m.
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