They all have to go as the federal government cleans out the National Wildlife Property Repository, a vast warehouse crammed with 1.5 million miscellaneous items containing bits of creatures great and small...
Anyone who has lost a bird dome, a stuffed crow, or an anthropomorphic fox to U.S. Customs over the year take note: your chance to retrieve your lost merchandise--legally!--might have come!
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service--in a series of rolling online auctions--is selling off hundreds of thousands of confiscated items in order to clear out their warehouse and raise funds for wildlife conservation. Items found in the warehouse range from snake skin boots to "a beribboned walrus penis," Cape Buffalo heads to "a caiman, posed with a pipe in its mouth and an ashtray in its claws" (above, bottom image).
It should be mentioned that, "by law, the government can't sell anything containing, or even suspected of containing, an endangered species." Also, much of the higher-end contraband has been already sent to schools, zoos and museums for exhibits, and objects deemed crass are being withheld from the auction, so some of the more exotic, freaky, and museum-quality objects won't be finding their way to auction. Still, this auction promises to be a fascinating and contraversial one.
You can find out more here, compliments of the Wall Street Journal online:
Uncle Sam Wants You to Bid on This Fine Weasel Fur Coat
Confiscated Wildlife Goods Are Auctioned; Boon or Bane for Conservation?
By STEPHANIE SIMONCOMMERCE CITY, Colo.—Uncle Sam is having a clearance sale, and it's heavy on genuine cobra-skin boots.
Also, python boots. Ostrich boots. And stylish footwear made from lizard, eel and kangaroo.
They all have to go as the federal government cleans out the National Wildlife Property Repository, a vast warehouse crammed with 1.5 million miscellaneous items containing bits of creatures great and small.
All the goods in the warehouse, from the shaggy Cape buffalo head to the beribboned walrus penis, have been seized at ports of entry by agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for violating laws regulating international trade in wildlife.
Warehouse supervisor Bernadette Atencio sends much of the contraband to schools, zoos and museums for exhibits. Ho-hum items that don't have much educational value are destroyed; she recently sent dozens of lizard-trim eyeglass cases to the incinerator. Ms. Atencio also disposes of all the medicinal potions that cross her desk—and the occasional bug-infested trophy leopard.
But she can never catch up. The Congressional Research Service pegs the illegal trade in wildlife products at more than $5 billion and perhaps as much as $20 billion a year world-wide. Nearly 200,000 items came into the warehouse last year, overwhelming Ms. Atencio's staff of four.
The solution? Clean house.
In a rolling online auction that started in February and will run through the summer, the Fish and Wildlife Service is selling off 300,000 items.
A dozen fur coats made from Siberian weasel sold for $4,450. A box of 270 acrylic key chains, each encasing "one small black salamander," went for $35. There are table lamps made of clam shells, drums covered with unspecified mammal skin, watches festooned with mother-of-pearl.
And a curious collection of clay dwarfs decorated with bits of python skin.
"What do you call those little figurines, the strange ones?" Ms. Atencio asked her colleague Doni Sprague.
Ms. Sprague had spent the afternoon sorting a jumble of new arrivals: 21 boxes of medicine containing dried sea horse; an antique sword inlaid with sea turtle shell; several bottles of foul-looking wine—purportedly good for treating arthritis—with pickled snakes coiled inside.
She looked up, casting about for a proper name for the figurines.
"They've got big hats," she said finally. "They're bizarre."
The auction disturbs some animal-rights activists who say an agency in the business of confiscating illegal goods shouldn't turn around and sell them because that only spurs demand. But Fish and Wildlife officials say they will use the money to preach conservation, and they've won some key backers.
The agency "needs more resources," said Crawford Allan, regulatory director of Traffic North America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping the illegal wildlife trade. "Rather than burn these things and create excess carbon," Mr. Allan said, "it's fine to sell them."
By law, the government can't sell anything containing, or even suspected of containing, an endangered species. Ms. Atencio also holds back items she thinks are crass.
That includes a belt made from the spotted fur of a Margay, a South American jungle cat. The unlucky creature's head, stuffed and glassy-eyed, is still attached, whiskers and all. It serves as the buckle. "That's just wrong," Ms. Atencio says.
She feels the same about a handbag made from a whole toad—tanned and shellacked, with a zipper down its belly. And about a knickknack made from a crocodilian reptile known as a caiman, posed with a pipe in its mouth and an ashtray in its claws. Looking at it, Ms. Atencio winces. "This is so degrading," she says. "And it's a waste of the resource—just to sit on someone's end table."
Much of the merchandise seized by inspectors is more pedestrian: belts, coats, wallets, jewelry and footwear, including top name brands (though the agency can't vouch for their authenticity). Such items are typically legal to import to the U.S.—but only with the proper paperwork.
When documents are missing, the goods end up here, in a 22,000-square-foot warehouse outside Denver.
Last time the government sold off surplus from the repository, at a live auction in 1999, it raised $500,000 for wildlife conservation.
Ms. Atencio hopes to match that take with the online bidding, run by Lone Star Auctioneers. The Texas company focuses on surplus government property, selling everything from bulldozers to diamond rings to Elvis Presley collectible coins.
Fish and Wildlife items—all sold as is—are posted online in batches, several dozen a week.
Jeremy Reed, an insurance salesman in Spring, Texas, stumbled across the site while looking for used-car auctions. He was drawn to some snazzy ostrich boots. Starting bid: $225 for 19 pairs, none his size. Mr. Reed figured he could resell them to a friend who owns a Western-wear store.
"I'm kind of entrepreneurial," says Mr. Reed.
By the time he started bidding, the price was up to $325. He went to $375—then watched in dismay as four new bidders jumped in. A week later, the boots were sold for $825.
Mr. Reed was disappointed. "There are people with really deep pockets," he says. "That kind of ruins it for bargain shoppers like me."
It's perfectly legal to resell most items bought at auction, so many pop up on eBay as soon as they leave federal control.
That angers Ashley Byrne, a senior campaigner with the animal-rights group PETA.
Ms. Byrne argues that the sale just stimulates demand for weasel coats and
python-trimmed figurines. Instead, she says, the agency should donate the merchandise to PETA. She has laid in quite a store of fake blood to splash on the shiny green snakeskin shoes and the weathered leather jackets trimmed with fox fur. She would like to put the bloodied goods on display anywhere she can, next to video monitors rolling footage of "animals being skinned alive or bludgeoned to death."The juxtaposition will make would-be shoppers queasy, Ms. Byrne promises. "As opposed," she says, "to perpetuating the idea that it's OK to turn an animal into a keychain."
You can read the full article and see the full slide show--from which the above images, by Matt McClain, were drawn--by clicking here. The action house dealing in this merchandise--Lone Star Auctioneers--can be accessed by clicking here.
Thanks to Michelle of Lapham's Quarterly for letting me know about this rather intriguing happenstance!
- "The Secret Museum" Exhibition Opening, Observatory, This Saturday, April 10, 7-10 PM - April 6th, 2010 [April 6th, 2010]
- Job Opportunities at the Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen - April 9th, 2010 [April 9th, 2010]
- "The Secret Museum" Exhibition Opening, Observatory, TONIGHT! April 10, 7-10 PM - April 10th, 2010 [April 10th, 2010]
- Animal Body Worlds at the Neunkirchen Zoo, Saarland, Germany - April 11th, 2010 [April 11th, 2010]
- Congress for Curious People: Lectures Begin Tomorrow Night at the Coney Island Museum! - April 12th, 2010 [April 12th, 2010]
- A Brief History of Automata, An Illustrated Lecture and Demonstration by Mike Zohn, Obscura Antiques and Oddities, TONIGHT! Coney Island Museum - April 14th, 2010 [April 14th, 2010]
- "The Brading Collection of Taxidermy, Waxworks, Costume and Similar Items," Duke's Auction House, Dorset, April 13th (Today!) - April 15th, 2010 [April 15th, 2010]
- Charles Wilson Peale and the Birth of the American Museum, Coney Island Museum, Tonight!!! - April 16th, 2010 [April 16th, 2010]
- "The Congress for Curious People," Epic 2-Day Symposium Begins Tomorrow!!! - April 16th, 2010 [April 16th, 2010]
- "A History of Taxidermy: Art, Science and Bad Taste," An Illustrated Presentation By Dr. Pat Morris, Congress for Curious People, Coney Island Museum - April 17th, 2010 [April 17th, 2010]
- The Dance of Death, 1919, Attributed to Josef Fenneker - April 20th, 2010 [April 20th, 2010]
- "Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads" Book and Lecture by Stephen Asma, Thursday April 22, Observatory - April 21st, 2010 [April 21st, 2010]
- "The Silken Web: The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946," Mel Gordon Lecture at Observatory, Tomorrow April 20th - April 21st, 2010 [April 21st, 2010]
- "Museums, Monsters and the Moral Imagination" Lecture by Stephen Asma, Tonight!, Observatory - April 22nd, 2010 [April 22nd, 2010]
- "The Rogue Taxidermy Kunstkammer," The Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, La Luz de Jesus, Los Angeles - April 23rd, 2010 [April 23rd, 2010]
- "Anatomical Art: Dissection to Illustration," Exhibition Curated by Marie Dauenheimer, Arlington, Virginia - April 26th, 2010 [April 26th, 2010]
- "Excellent Old-School Science Models," Life Magazine Photo Gallery - April 28th, 2010 [April 28th, 2010]
- "Three Unique Medical Museums in Northern Italy," Lecture by Marie Dauenheimer, Observatory, Saturday May 1 - April 29th, 2010 [April 29th, 2010]
- Tomorrow Night at Observatory! "Three Unique Medical Museums in Northern Italy," Lecture by Marie Dauenheimer - April 30th, 2010 [April 30th, 2010]
- "Imaging / Imagining the Skeleton," Symposium, Tomorrow, Friday, April 30, 1:00-4pm, CUNY Graduate Center - May 1st, 2010 [May 1st, 2010]
- Kabinett des Grotesken ("Cabinet of the Grotesque"), Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, Spiegel Online - May 4th, 2010 [May 4th, 2010]
- Head of Discovery and Engagement, Wellcome Library, Employment Opportunity - May 5th, 2010 [May 5th, 2010]
- "Experimenting with Death: An Introduction to Terror Management Theory," Lecture, Observatory, Thursday May 6 - May 5th, 2010 [May 5th, 2010]
- The Taxidermy of Mr. Walter Potter and his Museum of Curiosities, Melissa Milgrom - May 6th, 2010 [May 6th, 2010]
- Tonight!!! "Experimenting with Death: An Introduction to Terror Management Theory," Lecture, Observatory - May 6th, 2010 [May 6th, 2010]
- Original Fritz Kahn Posters and Key Booklet, Sotheby's Vintage Posters Auction, May 13 - May 6th, 2010 [May 6th, 2010]
- "The Saddest Object in the World," An Illustrated Meditation, Observatory, Friday, May 7th - May 7th, 2010 [May 7th, 2010]
- "An Atlas of Topographical Anatomy after Plane Sections of Frozen Bodies," Christian Wilhelm Braune, 1877 - May 7th, 2010 [May 7th, 2010]
- Tonight!!! "The Saddest Object in the World," An Illustrated Meditation, Observatory - May 9th, 2010 [May 9th, 2010]
- Various works by Francois Maréchal - May 13th, 2010 [May 13th, 2010]
- The Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium, May 19-20, College of Physicians, Philadelphia PA - May 14th, 2010 [May 14th, 2010]
- Morbid Magicians, Demented Doctors, and Sinister Swamis: The Golden Age of the American Spook Show, Observatory, Monday, May 17 - May 14th, 2010 [May 14th, 2010]
- Frank Frazetta, Renowned Fantasy Artist, Dies at 82 - May 15th, 2010 [May 15th, 2010]
- San Francisco Zen Center presents ‘The Accidents of our Materials’ with sculptors Arthur Ganson & Elizabeth King - May 18th, 2010 [May 18th, 2010]
- Various Works by George Washington Thomas Lambert - May 19th, 2010 [May 19th, 2010]
- The Never-Realized Führermuseum, Linz, Austria - May 21st, 2010 [May 21st, 2010]
- Proteus Gowanus Benefit/Anniversary Party, Saturday, May 22nd, 7-10 p.m. - May 21st, 2010 [May 21st, 2010]
- "Many Dead Things: The Specimens of Alex CF," Superette Gallery, London - May 22nd, 2010 [May 22nd, 2010]
- "The Secret Museum," Photography Exhibition, Observatory, Closes June 6th - May 23rd, 2010 [May 23rd, 2010]
- Various Figure Drawings by Sergio Lopez - May 24th, 2010 [May 24th, 2010]
- "Another Science Fiction," Tomorrow, Tuesday May 25, 86th Street Barnes and Noble, 7 PM, NYC - May 24th, 2010 [May 24th, 2010]
- The Secret Museum Website and Exhibition Closing Party - May 27th, 2010 [May 27th, 2010]
- Oxberry Pegs Presents: Animators Are God? Series, "The Clay Animation of Jimmy Picker," Saturday May 29th, Observatory - May 28th, 2010 [May 28th, 2010]
- Exhibition to Revisit Contemporary Korean Art - May 28th, 2010 [May 28th, 2010]
- Portrait Sketches by Luke Kopycinski - May 28th, 2010 [May 28th, 2010]
- Despite Tightening Up Of Society, Iranian Art Sees A Boom - May 29th, 2010 [May 29th, 2010]
- Various Works by Santiago Rusiñol - May 29th, 2010 [May 29th, 2010]
- Various works by Tina Spratt - May 30th, 2010 [May 30th, 2010]
- MAXXI Gallery, Rome’s First Contemporary Art Museum Opens Its Doors - May 31st, 2010 [May 31st, 2010]
- Michelangelo’s Hidden Sistine Chapel Message Discovered - May 31st, 2010 [May 31st, 2010]
- Various Works by Dorian Iten - June 3rd, 2010 [June 3rd, 2010]
- Monet’s Water-Lily Painting For Sale - June 3rd, 2010 [June 3rd, 2010]
- Secret Museum Closing Party and Morbid Anatomy Library/Observatory Open Studios, This Weekend! - June 3rd, 2010 [June 3rd, 2010]
- Art Students League of Denver Summer Art Market - June 3rd, 2010 [June 3rd, 2010]
- Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian (c. 200 CE) - June 3rd, 2010 [June 3rd, 2010]
- "I’m Officially Obsessed with Observatory," Melissa Stern for Time Out New York, June 2010 - June 4th, 2010 [June 4th, 2010]
- Gallery Nucleus Presents Enchanté - June 4th, 2010 [June 4th, 2010]
- Various Works by Edward Kinsella - June 4th, 2010 [June 4th, 2010]
- Renowned Sculpture Artist Louise Bourgeois Dies - June 4th, 2010 [June 4th, 2010]
- Various Works by Paul Gauguin - June 5th, 2010 [June 5th, 2010]
- Various Works by Stephen Pan - June 6th, 2010 [June 6th, 2010]
- Bravo Premieres “Work of Art” Reality Show - June 6th, 2010 [June 6th, 2010]
- Art of Photography Show – Entry Deadline June 7th - June 6th, 2010 [June 6th, 2010]
- "Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig" Lecture, Coney Island Museum, Sunday June 13th, 4:30 PM - June 7th, 2010 [June 7th, 2010]
- Amazing Auction Alert! "The Gallery of Creation, a Museum of Natural History, Created by Joseph Hurt Studio, Inc.", Friday and Saturday, June 25 & 26 - June 9th, 2010 [June 9th, 2010]
- Various Works by Ron Hicks - June 10th, 2010 [June 10th, 2010]
- Two Upcoming Events at Observatory by Torino:Margolis - June 11th, 2010 [June 11th, 2010]
- This Sunday! "Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig" Lecture, Coney Island Museum, Sunday June 13th, 4:30 PM - June 11th, 2010 [June 11th, 2010]
- Various Works by Lui Ferreyra - June 11th, 2010 [June 11th, 2010]
- "Borrowed from the Charnel House," Saul Chernick, Opening Tonight, NYC! - June 12th, 2010 [June 12th, 2010]
- Zoe Beloff London Engagements, Tonight and Tomorrow Night, June 10th and 11 - June 12th, 2010 [June 12th, 2010]
- Various Works by John M Collier - June 14th, 2010 [June 14th, 2010]
- “Show Time” by Mariano Steiner - June 15th, 2010 [June 15th, 2010]
- This Friday at Observatory! "The Anatomical Unconscious: X-Ray Specs, Visible Women, and the Eros of the Unseen," With Cult Author Mark Dery - June 18th, 2010 [June 18th, 2010]
- "Woman Advertising J.M. Dolph, Furniture Maker and Undertaker," Cabinet card, circa 1877 - June 19th, 2010 [June 19th, 2010]
- Various works by Karol Bak - June 22nd, 2010 [June 22nd, 2010]
- Amazing Auction Alert #2: "The Owsten Collection," June 25th and 26th, Sydney, Australia - June 23rd, 2010 [June 23rd, 2010]
- The Art of the Potentially Deadly Deal: Marketing Heroin on the Street - June 24th, 2010 [June 24th, 2010]
- This Tuesday at Observatory! Torino:Margolis Performance - June 28th, 2010 [June 28th, 2010]
- Various Works by Eran Webber - June 29th, 2010 [June 29th, 2010]