Live Streaming: Great Adventure in the Wilderness-Chapter 576 - 573: This is not a rescue operation, it’s a struggle for interests!

"Are you insane?" Gang Tianwu didn’t even use honorifics, directly using "you", "You expect me to suspend the hunting season and arrest the second-ranked contestant just because you gave me a spiel about the reasons and principles of animal protection?"

"Does Chief Matsumoto not realize how popular this show has become lately? Over a hundred million people worldwide are following it, and tens of millions know about it in our country alone, with over ten million viewers sitting in front of their TVs or smartphones every day!"

"This is no longer a small entertainment program led by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department! It’s our reputation at stake, we cannot proceed, not even with solid evidence, let’s forget mere suspicion!"

"That is not the case, Mr. Gang," Matsumoto Kiyotaka’s tone was very serious, "The words I just spoke are exactly Tiangella’s publicly stated principles."

The scale of this company is so large it’s almost unbelievable, from America to Europe, then to Asia; except for Antarctica, it’s practically all over the world.

They operate on the principle that business is protection, purchasing hunting licenses across the world to carry out a series of legal activities.

It’s not that wildlife cannot be bought and sold, but it must be done legally and compliantly.

However, legal trade faces two major practical issues: one, the taxes are high, and two, the quantities are limited. Driven by huge profits, these people do not care about sustainable development.

Even this hunting season, Japan’s official agencies had dealings with Tiangella.

"Dealings? How come I wasn’t aware?" Gang Tianwu was stunned.

"This is unrelated to the police department; it’s an event organized by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. They sold all the Black Bear carcasses hunted this time to Tiangella. It’s quite normal that Group Leader Gang isn’t aware," Matsumoto Kiyotaka explained, "But that’s not important."

"Tiangella has many clubs under their banner and several auctions where they maintain friendly relations with TNC (The Nature Conservation Association), organizing multiple events and claiming that hunting is also a method of ecological conservation."

The only problem is.

"Now look at this," Matsumoto Kiyotaka handed Gang Tianwu a second video.

The content of this video was relatively straightforward.

Tiangella had been exposed.

An undercover agent participated in the annual meeting of an international hunting club in Reno, Nevada State, featuring a competitive hunting event with trophies for killing large game like elephants, lions, leopards, or rhinoceroses, which many wealthy individuals could purchase the opportunity to slaughter.

Once the news broke, it caused an enormous scandal.

That year, Tiangella suffered a major blow. Even though they quickly disassociated themselves from their subsidiary clubs, fired a mass of employees, and claimed they were "outsourced," "uninformed," and "lacked supervision," they still took a heavy hit to their vitality.

"Now look at this list."

Gang Tianwu had a premonition and, sure enough, he saw Bertrand Guy’s name on it.

"According to what I have found so far, Bertrand Guy joined Tiangella before the incident, but only briefly, less than a mere half a year, before being pushed out because of the scandal, and later sentenced to ten months of imprisonment," Matsumoto Kiyotaka continued.

"But it’s been said that Bertrand was spotted three months after the incident, though Tiangella explained it as a similar appearance, which led to another wave of public outcry, believing that it was a bail provided by Tiangella."

Gang Tianwu was speechless; he had never imagined that the seemingly amiable old man had such a rich background.

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There are three major illegal trades in the world: the first is drug smuggling, the second is arms smuggling, and the third is trafficking of wildlife.

According to data disclosed by the Ugoku State Department, wildlife smuggling is second only to drugs and arms, with annual transactions ranging from 10 to 20 billion Ugoku Yuan.

Reportedly, every year around the world, there are illegal transactions involving 50,000 primates, 140,000 African elephant tusks, 10 million reptile skins, 15 million mammals, 350 million tropical fish, and over 100,000 tons of rhino horns, generating profits as high as 10 billion Ugoku Yuan annually.

Among them, the annual transaction volume of endangered species smuggling is at least estimated to be between 2 and 3 billion US Dollars.

The former Secretary-General of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) at the United Nations, Johan Scanlon, provided data showing that the illegal trade of species listed by CITES is valued at approximately 20 billion Ugly Yuan annually, but the total value of all illegal wildlife trade can reach around 200 billion Ugly Yuan each year.

The sheer amount of it is astounding.

These figures undoubtedly prove one thing: the wildlife smuggling trade has formed a complete industrial chain, connecting people of different skin colors and cultures from around the globe as simply as if they were trading ordinary products.

Yet Bertrand Guy was one of them, and even after several decades, he had changed his appearance and emerged in a way that no one could have anticipated.

Tiangella’s incident had happened more than a decade ago, and no one remembered Bertrand Guy anymore, and even if they did, the changes over a decade would make it difficult to recognize the once spirited Hunter, who had become an old man in his fifties.

Whether Tiangella was innocent or had indeed been negligent in its supervision, Chief Matsumoto didn’t know, but Bertrand Guy was definitely not a good person!

Chief Matsumoto even suspected that Tiangella itself wasn’t clean, and perhaps that amputation was just a way to move a group of subordinates from the public eye to the shadows.

However, without evidence, these were just thoughts that crossed Chief Matsumoto’s mind.

Unfortunately, Chief Matsumoto and Gang Tianwu ultimately lacked some insight; if they had only thought to read the name tianusGra backwards—Gratianus.

Gratianus, the elder son of Valentinian I, Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was made Augustus by his father at age eight, with the poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius as his tutor.

He had a lifelong passion for hunting, which was not only his hobby but also became his life, and he ultimately lost his Empire because of it.

"But what does this have to do with Dolphin Bay?" Gang Tianwu still didn’t understand after all this time.

Even if Bertrand did have a lot of dirt, why arrest him? Why not turn a blind eye?

Leaving the role of the bringers of justice to others had nothing to do with them.

Chief Matsumoto clenched his teeth in anger, "It’s because these people are helping Richard! We’ve always been unable to catch them!"

Chief Matsumoto finally realized it.

Clearly, this was the doing of Bertrand and the gang behind him.

A guy who started with wildlife, how could he possibly forget the taste of success?

"Their ultimate goal is to put us under international condemnation, to force us, under public pressure, to give up dolphin hunting. With no one capturing the wild dolphins, they would eventually belong to them!"

Chief Matsumoto spoke emphatically, realizing that he had been in the dark, and Richard had been deceived as well.

Interests are a matter of supply and demand.

Does demand disappear if no one is hunting?

Impossible, demand would only become stronger, and the price of dolphins would skyrocket!

These animal traffickers had their sights set on this fact, much like businesses smear their competitors’ product quality, aiming to monopolize the market!

What Taiji Town was facing was not a rescue operation at all but a group of sharks that had smelled blood, a bunch of even more greedy monsters.

This was clearly a struggle for interests!

"We have to protect the interests of Taiji Town, and we can’t let them succeed!"

"Gang Tianwu, I beg you, even if we don’t halt the hunting season, we must arrest Bertrand and expose everyone behind them!"