Hundreds upon hundreds of endangered animals perish on Malaysian roads each year. Thankfully, however, officials are doing something about it. In the works are more wildlife crossings in what is a welcome development. Such crossings alone, though, won’t solve the problem of animals ending up as roadkill while they try…

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…

Within the space of just five years, between 2012 and 2017, officials have recorded a total of 2,444 road accidents involving wild animals belonging to 30 species. That means that there is at least one deadly road accident involving a wild animal every single day of the year. And that’s…

Prominent Malaysian animal rights activists say that conditions at Kemaman Zoo in Terengganu are appalling. Members of the NGOs Malaysian Friends of the Animals and Friends of the Orangutans (Foto) have recently provided photographic evidence indicating that several resident animals, from orangutans to elephants, were being neglected and mistreated at…

The pictures of several animals at Kemaman Zoo in Pahang are heartrending. The  images, which have been shared widely on social media, show chimps, a juvenile orangutan, an elephant, and a tiger kept in what appear to be dismal conditions. Animal rights activists say the photographs, which were taken recently…

Two Malaysian animal rights organizations are up in arms over what they say are the appalling conditions in which several animals are kept at Kemaman Zoo in Terengganu. Malaysian Friends of the Animals and Friends of the Orangutans are calling on the management of the zoo, which started operations in…

A small slap on the wrist is how conservationist groups see the sentence handed down in Ipoh to a man who was convicted of having been in illegal possession of the carcass of a Malayan tiger. The man was caught by Perhilitan officials as he was carrying the dead tiger…

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…

The road carnage must stop. Shortly after an adult elephant died after being hit by a tour bus on the East-West Highway in Perak, two Malayan tapirs suffered a similar fate when a passing car barreled into the animals at high speed on a carriageway in Pahang. The two Malayan…

If you participate in wildlife crimes, directly or indirectly, you should stop. If you do stop, you will be let off lightly. If you continue breaking wildlife laws, however, you risk getting nabbed and possibly slapped with a severe penalty. That’s the message that Abdul Kadir Abu Hashim, director-general of…

If Malaysia’s beleaguered tigers have something to fear more than poaching, it’s habitat loss. The majestic predators have seen their numbers drop precipitously over the past decades in tandem with the loss of the country’s forests and jungles. Once there were thousands of tigers roaming vast swathes of jungle. Today, a mere 340 tigers (at most)…

Back in 2010, the Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers (MYCAT), an association of prominent conservationist groups, set up a wildlife crime hotline. People could now report crimes against the country’s iconic but increasingly endangered tigers simply by dialing a number. The hotline has been busy ever since. Callers can report crimes…

Score a big one up for wildlife officers! In what has proved to be the biggest bust of wildlife traffickers so far this year, officials have arrested two separate gangs with their motley crews of local Malaysians, two Chinese men and seven Vietnamese smugglers. The raids, which took place at…

The battle to save Malaysia’s wildlife has been a long and troubled one.  Throughout Malaysia’s history, its rarified environments and exotic variety of life have been a source of both pride and agitation.  Rare and endangered species in Malaysia – in fact, all animal species in Malaysia – are caught…

Malaysia’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) recently approved a survey of the country’s tiger population.  Six times more thorough than the last such estimate, this survey will reveal the Malayan tiger’s true chances of survival. Covering 20,000 square kilometers (20 plots of 1,000 sq km each), the proposed…

Four men were recently arrested – and the two juvenile Orangutans they were trying to sell were saved – thanks to a social media program the Malaysian Government is using to ambush wildlife traders. Code-named Ops Taring III, the social media crackdown is showing promise. In March, seven other wildlife traffickers were caught. They…