Illegal entry: endangered animal smuggling is big business at U.S. ports.

Mary was returning to Miami from a South American vacation when a U.S. Customs agent asked her to answer some routine questions regarding her declaration of a large sum of money. She was very nervous and repeatedly touched her hair, which was done up in a high bun. Suddenly, the hair began to twist and make noise. Agitated, she reached up and removed a baby marmoset that had been drugged and tucked into her hair for the plane ride. Lacking the necessary permits, Mary forfeited the marmoset, which was subsequently adopted by the Miami Zoo.

In their jobs as U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) inspectors, Eddie McKissick and Rose McCloud encounter incredible smuggling attempts, from amateurs like Mary, to seasoned pros who use "runner" networks and rake in millions. McCloud, who's been based in the San Francisco area for 11 years, says she seizes an average of two illegal items weekly.

Estimated at $2 to $3 billion a year, the professional trade in endangered wildlife and byproducts is thriving. According to Washington-based USFWS agent Bruce Weissgold, as much as 95 percent of the wildlife brought into the United States is cleared on paperwork alone because there aren't enough inspectors to oversee the volume that passes through the ports of entry.

Today, nearly a third of the world's wildlife is in danger of extinction, and a major cause, second only to habitat loss, is the illegal smuggling trade. Profit margins are high and the risk of getting caught is low - giving animal poachers plenty of room to move. Many of these animals being taken from the wild are now worth more dead than alive. And to collectors, often the more endangered a species is, the more valuable it is on the black market.

Live animals and illegal wildlife products get into the U.S. in a number of ways. Many items slip through in shipments destined for department and specialty stores. Live reptiles have been smuggled through the mail in Tupperware containers marked "Fragile Glass." A man caught by a Miami wildlife inspector with a live South American woolly monkey (street value, $10,000) in his inner coat pocket, denied the smuggling charge and said it must have "jumped" into his coat.

Miami is the port of entry for about 75 percent of all legal wildlife shipments into the United States, and consequently, most of the illegal shipments. Attracted by high profits and low risk - and under increasing public scrutiny - large numbers of drug traffickers are getting involved in the illegal wildlife trade. McKissick says some smugglers even combine the two trades by sewing their drugs into the stomachs of live animals.

"These people are nuts. They'll try anything," says McCloud. When McCloud confiscates goods that need a positive ID, she sends them to a 23,000 square-foot, $3.5 million forensics lab in Ashland, Oregon. Known as the "Scotland Yard" of wildlife crime, this state-of-the-art facility assists federal, state and foreign wildlife enforcement agencies with analysis and identification of animal parts and products. Directed by Ken Goddard, a former chief criminologist for the Huntington Beach, California police department, the forensic lab is divided into three key parts: visual and microscopic identification, blood and tissue analysis, and chemical analysis, toxicology and firearms detection. When the work is done, forensic workers meticulously tag the products and send them to the National Eagle and Wildlife Property Repository in Commerce City, Colorado, a 22,000 square-foot storage facility with floor-to-ceiling blue metal shelves. Goddard has dubbed this vast collection a "shop of horrors."

The collection has a certain wild beauty - until its full implications become clear. Elephant tusks lie in piles on shelves alongside boxes filled with ornate ivory carvings. Further into the warehouse are boxed fans, frames, clocks, cuff links and toiletries made from endangered sea turtles. Brightly colored packages contain Chinese medicinals that promise to cure ailments from arthritis to impotence.

One grotesque pair of shoes adorned with cane toad heads has a matching toad bag, whose bloated belly zips open.

The USFWS sends many of the warehoused items out to schools and zoos in an effort to educate the public. "Our primary goal is to educate people about wildlife laws by sending most of the confiscated items out to schools, zoos, museums and airports," says Bernadette Hilbourn, the repository's supervisor. "The Cargo for Conservation teaching kit for educators is so successful that we currently have 300 schools on our waiting list."

The Pacific Northwest Natural History Museum, across the street from the forensics lab in Ashland, houses a permanent display of confiscated goods. "If we didn't buy the stuff, they wouldn't poach it," says Ron Lamb, the museum's former director. "We simply can't continue to use products from endangered animals or we will be as guilty of depleting those populations as the poachers themselves."

Eventually, what were once nature's most spectacular animals lose their shelf space in the forensics lab to make way for new captured treasures, and the old ones are destroyed in an incinerator - an apt symbol for this endangered animal holocaust. CONTACT: International Fund for Animal Welfare, PO Box 193, Yarmouth Port, MA 02675/[phone]; World Wildlife Fund, 1250 24th Street NW, Washington, DC 20037/[phone].