The Wildlife Conservation Society recently presented its annual awards to 15 individuals and organizations in China, who've made outstanding contributions to combat wildlife trafficking from the frontlines.

The event, which took place on Nov 24 in Beijing, marked the fourth consecutive year the US-based WCS has presented such awards.

The Wildlife Guardian Action award is the first of its kind in the country and is supported by the central government. It enhances public awareness about endangered wildlife protection and crimes that threaten species, WCS China Program director Kang Aili says.

A Beijing Film Academy documentary screened at the awards ceremony told the winners' stories. It showed them stalking international borders, climbing the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau's snowy mountains and prowling the Inner Mongolian autonomous region's grasslands.

Li Tianyou, captain of the forestry police investigation team of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and the anti-smuggling bureau of Xiamen Customs in Fujian province's Xiamen city shared the top "outstanding guardians" honor of this year.

The winners will receive training and equipment to advance their work.

Since August 2011, Li and his colleagues have cracked 213 trafficking cases, seizing 341 animals that are first-class nationally protected species and 5,227 from the second class. It also confiscated 2,226 illegal wildlife products.

Residents of Guangxi's capital Nanning were shocked by the brutality on show when Li exhibited the confiscated animal carcasses and products, including ivory, pangolins and bear paws, in a city square in March.

"Unfortunately, that was many onlookers' first time seeing these rare animals," Li says.

"I fear later generations won't even have a chance to see their products, let alone the living creatures."

On May 22, 2006, Xiamen Dongdu Customs inspectors opened a box imported from Indonesia labeled "frozen fish". The actual contents were 2,849 frozen pangolins and 2,600 big geckos.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. The next eight months were spent bringing down an international wildlife trafficking ring that smuggled animals from Southeast Asian countries into China.

The number of pangolins the group smuggled in one year was almost equal to the species' population in Cambodia.

In August 2011, Xiamen Customs cracked the largest ivory smuggling case since 1949.

But this hasn't stopped the ivory trade. China is one of ivory's biggest black markets, which fuels killings and smugglings, according to the global program monitoring wildlife trade network TRAFFIC.

The growing demand for ivory has brought African elephant poaching to the highest level in a decade.

More than 25,000 elephants are killed every year, TRAFFIC reports.

China joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in 1981.

"Wildlife's connection to the environment supports humankind's life and development," says Yang Wanguo, a Beijing News investigative reporter, whose report on China's ivory trade shed light on the market's dark side.

"The public should know wildlife products come from bloody slaughters."

Contact the writer at wangru@chinadaily.com.cn.