Last year officials of  the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) rescued creatures belonging to 150 species. You’ve read that right: In 2017 wildlife officials handled nearly 3,000 cases of wildlife trafficking in which animals from a whopping 150 species, according to Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, minister of Natural Resources and…

Operation Gading in Gerik took three days and required 40 officers, but success did beckon at the end of it. Under arrest are four professional hunters who may have killed as many as 20 wild elephants for their tusks in Malaysia over the past decade. The joint team from the…

Malaysia has fairly strong environmental laws that prescribe harsh penalties for wildlife trafficking and other nefarious crimes against the environment. Yet these activities, including wildlife trafficking, continue to persist around the nation. Why is that? For one thing, laws are routinely left unenforced and culprits are let off the hook…

Pangolins are among the world’s most harmless and strangest mammals. They are also among its most trafficked animals, being driven inexorably ever closer to exctinction by unscrupulous poachers and wildlife trafficking syndicates. It seems the outrages against these shy and reclusive mammals never end. A case in point: Some 4,000…

Facebook is a handy social media platform for keeping touch with friends and relatives and for keeping abreast of developments. Sadly, the site has also become a convenient tool for wildlife traffickers to reach an ever wider pool of potential buyers for their ill-gotten fare. This has long been the…

One of the world’s most notorious wildlife traffickers is now behind bars. Boonchai Bach, a Thai Vietnamese man who operated out of Thailand for more than a decade, has finally been arrested by Thai authorities. “It is like catching one of the Corleones,” enthused Steven Galster, the founder of the…

Cornered by Malaysian authorities who were in hot pursuit, the Indonesian wildlife smugglers decided to act: They drowned the 300 songbirds in their possession, presumably in a bid to rid themselves of the incriminating evidence of their trafficking activities. Malaysia’s Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) officers managed to apprehend the three…

One hundred forty-eight kilograms. That’s how much African elephant tusks confiscated by customs officials at an international airport in Bangkok weighed. The large haul of ivory, which is worth around 15 million Thai baht (RM1.9 million), was comprised of three large tusks and 31 tusk fragments. They had been flown…

More than 35,000. That’s how many Sunda pangolins are known to have been lost to poaching and wildlife trafficking within a few short years in neighboring Indonesia. Shocking? You bet. According to a new study by the wildlife-monitoring watchdog TRAFFIC, as many as 35,632 pangolins were seized in 111 enforcement…

At times wildlife traffickers try to smuggle animal parts out of Malaysia in suitcases at airports. At other times they do so by sending such illicit merchandise abroad by mail. They are quite brazen, yes. Thankfully, alert customs officials can and do regularly step in and stop the shipments from…

Malaysian businesses can do a lot to help save the country’s world-famous environment. For starters, they can do this by refraining from polluting Malaysia’s air and water. Yet some environmentally conscious companies do not stop there. Malaysia Airlines Bh has, for one, vowed to take a firm stance against international…

Illicit wildlife products have been pouring into and out of Malaysia: elephant tusks, pangolin scales, deer antlers, tiger claws, sun bear teeth and claws. We know because in the past few weeks alone Malaysian authorities have managed to seize tons of such items at ports and airports from Sabah to…

It’s not that there were any more proof needed that much of Africa’s wildlife is being decimated at appalling rates, but it has been provided again nonetheless. That evidence came in the form of 23 elephant tusks and 300kg of pangolin scales. They belong to the latest shipments of illicit…

Three more down, plenty more to go. Two Thais and a Malaysian man have been arrested for trying to smuggle eight rare sulcata tortoises, also known as African spurred tortoises (Centrochelys sulcata), through Malaysia’s border with Thailand. The trio of smugglers, who were between 24 and 28, tried to cross…

Just when we’ve thought that Malaysian officials have managed to successfully roll back international ivory-smuggling syndicates using the country as a transit point, here comes a reminder that ivory smugglers remain relentless and continue to use the country for their nefarious activities. To wit: customs officials in Hong Kong discovered…

A routine police check of a Malaysian citizen’s vehicle travelling in the southern Thai border town of Hat Yai revealed two illegally transported passengers: a pair baby orangutans. Also in the car with the man were scores of turtles, which had been wrapped tightly in plastic tape so they could…