The Diane Rehm Show

Confiscated at a market in Bangkok, Thailand, slow lorises are held as evidence at a police station. An international treaty prohibits trade in these nocturnal forest animals. Popular in Japan and Russia, they can sell for a thousand dollars each.

Forestry police in Medan, Indonesia, store an array of contraband at their headquarters. None of these mounted animals—including a tiger, a clouded leopard, and hawksbill sea turtles—can be sold legally, alive or dead. Saws and spare chains came from illegal logging.

At a farm in Vietnam, bile is pumped from a sedated Asiatic black bear, violating national law. Thousands of wild bears have been captured to supply this traditional medicine.

In an Indonesian slaughterhouse workmen slit open wild-caught blood pythons, pumped full of water and air for ease of skinning. Reptile skins that will be turned into luxury leather goods are the world's top legally traded animal part.

Tourists feed tigers at a private zoo in Guilin, China. Owners of such animals are pushing to legalize sales of captive-tiger products. Conservationists fear that any form of legal tiger trade would further endanger the few cats that still roam free.