WildAid campaigner: Hong Kong has come a long way in combatting illegal wildlife trade

British-born wildlife campaigner Alex Hofford came to Hong Kong on holiday just before the 1997 handover and ended up settling here. The long-time activist, who lives with his family in the New Territories, began working in the city as a photojournalist reporting on environmental issues and has since travelled across Asia covering the illegal wildlife trade. Since 2014, he has acted as the chief English spokesman for campaign group WildAid Hong Kong, which has recently been focusing its efforts on eradicating the city’s ivory and shark fin trades. He spoke to City Weekend about the power of social media, changing age-old cultural traditions and why the city’s illegal wildlife traders’ days are numbered.

Your recent protest at restaurant chain Maxim’s over its sale of shark fin dishes received international media attention. Why did you target them?

It was logical for us to go after the restaurants because no one has really done it. We wanted to target the largest restaurant chain in Hong Kong. We were concerned they were taking some half measures on shark fin, because they say they only serve blue shark, which is not officially endangered but is certainly not sustainable. Also, they may have a policy to only serve blue sharks – that may be their official policy – but has that policy reached their frontline staff? I don’t think it has. We have an audio recording of our volunteer being offered endangered species by a Maxim’s employee. The workers there can certainly order endangered species for you. But what is worse is that they are still selling shark at all.

Within the shark conservation movement we had reached a bit of an impasse, and we were trying to figure out how we could get past this stagnation point. We had a lot of success with our airline campaign – 44 airlines that go through Hong Kong are now shark-free, and there are 17 shipping lines that are now shark-free for their cargo. We seem to have been making good headway with the corporate sector, and the government always said to us that “we will follow where the corporate sector leads”. So that was when we decided to target restaurants. The reaction to the protest has been very positive. It’s even been reported on Chinese official state media channels.

What further reaction have you had from Maxim’s?

They sent out a press release in the wake of our protest saying they have a sustainable sourcing strategy. They said they have made continuous efforts to promote shark-free menus since 2010, and that shark fin consumption has dropped by more than 50 per cent in that time, but more than 60 per cent of their customers still prefer shark fin dishes in banquet menus. But I shared research with them from respected scientists which shows that although blue shark was classified as “near threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2005, the reality is today it would likely be listed as “endangered”. I urged them to therefore consider not selling blue shark too as it’s not sustainable. But they won’t. And they said they didn’t believe the audio file we shared of our volunteer being offered endangered species on the phone. They said it was fabricated.

Why do you think Hongkongers appear reluctant to give up shark fin?