Last month, within a matter of days, alert customs officials at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport seized two giant hauls of pangolin scales, which had been flown in from Africa and weighed 712kg in total. This month they discovered yet another giant haul of scales at an air cargo warehouse at…

You might think that Malaysian authorities’ stepped-up efforts to clamp down on poachers and wildlife traffickers have these wrongdoers on the run. Poachers and traffickers are cowering in fear of arrest, doing all they can to remain undetected. Right? Wrong. Some of the poachers clearly don’t give a hoot about…

Malaysia is a major gateway for international wildlife traffickers into Southeast Asia. We’ve long known that, of course, but just in case here is a reminder: The country, which boasts one of the most biodiverse but also most threatened environments on the planet, is “the world’s paramount ivory transit country, with its ports serving…

The shipment this time was from Mozambique, via Doha in Qatar, and consisted of 18 rhino horns. Alert Malaysian authorities at Kuala Lumpur International Airport managed to seize the horns, which amounted to 51.5kg and would have been worth almost RM14 million on the black market. Acting on a tip, Malaysian customs officers conducted a search of…

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…

When even seasoned experts are taken aback by the scale of wildlife trafficking across Malaysia, you know we’re in trouble. Yet taken aback experts are at TRAFFIC, an international anti-trafficking watchdog. And rightfully so. Recent arrests of several wildlife traffickers by Malaysian authorities have provided further evidence (not that any more was…

Another five are down. Wildlife traffickers, that is. In five separate clampdowns on wildlife trafficking in later February, Malaysian authorities seized large numbers of endangered animals from wildlife traders, all of whom will be facing charges under the country’s Wildlife Conservation Act 2010. In one operation Department of Wildlife and…

Wildlife traffickers tend to be a wily lot. Routinely they can easily avoid wildlife and customs officials by hiding their ill-gotten merchandise of ivory and rhino horns in well-concealed packages. Enter canine wildlife guardians. With their acute sense of smell, which is a thousand times stronger than that of humans, so-called detector dogs are…

Seven elephant poachers who were labelled “most wanted” by authorities in Peninsular Malaysia are at large no more: they’ve been arrested and are now behind bars. In a joint operation between the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) and the country’s Armed Forces, a gang of seven local suspected poachers was caught near the Taman…

They’re a persistent lot, are they not? Wildlife traffickers, that is. Malaysian authorities have been stepping up their efforts to clamp down on international smuggling networks that use the country as a regional transit point for the trafficking of ivory from Africa. That, though, has clearly not deterred ivory-smuggling syndicates. And so 2017 has started pretty…

China says it has decided to ban all domestic trade in ivory by the end of this year. Time to celebrate? Sort of. “China will gradually stop the processing and sales of ivories for commercial purposes by the end of 2017,” the country’s Xinhua news service reported, referring to a government statement….

First came a report. Now comes a new case that confirms it. The report: According to a study by the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP), an alliance of numerous NGOs and governments, thousands of great apes, including orangutans, have been trafficked over the past years. Since 2005, 1,800 of them have been…

The world’s “most trafficked” mammal continues to be trafficked relentlessly … within Malaysia, out of Malaysia and into Malaysia. No wild pangolin anywhere is safe, it seems, from the clutches of poachers and traffickers. In the latest incident, a haul of more than 670 kilograms of African pangolin was intercepted in Cameroon…

On average, two tigers are killed every single week for their parts, despite ongoing efforts to protect the critically endangered predators across their ranges in Asia. So say two leading conservationist groups, TRAFFIC and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), in a joint report. Based on data from the…

Whether we like it or not, Malaysia is a major global hub of wildlife trafficking. Both indigenous species and foreign ones, as well as their body parts, continue passing into and out of the country at the hands of unscrupulous criminal syndicates. That must stop. Natural Resources and Environment Minister…

The plight of turtles in Malaysia continues. Exhibit A: Four Indian men were detained in two separate sting operations for possessing a total of 1,070 exotic and endangered turtles belonging to several species. In one of the raids, two Indian nationals were nabbed by Wildlife Crime Unit officials at a…