Up to 10,000 smuggled animals seized in past year: Thailand

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Up to 10,000 smuggled animals seized in past year
Pongphon Sarnsamak
The Nation

MORE THAN 10,000 wild animals have been seized from illegal trade during the past year, the national wildlife protection agency said yesterday.

BANGKOK: -- Sunda pangolins, squirrels, elephants, tigers and gibbons became the most frequently seized mammals in Thailand's illegal wildlife trade last year, said Tiradej Palasuwan of the Wildlife Conservation Office.

He was speaking at a seminar titled "Legal Revisions to Stop Wildlife Crime" organised by the Freeland Foundation and its allies.

He said the department had confiscated about 10,700 live animals, 1,348 carcasses, and 3,293 kilograms of animal parts from traffickers in the past year.

His department also arrested 642 people allegedly involved in illegal wildlife trade in 2013.

"It was very difficult to arrest the wildlife traffickers as they have developed tricks to avoid the eyes of police," he said.

They used many cars and trucks to transfer animals and parts, especially Sunda pangolins and tigers from Malaysia, to cross the borders of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

"We found that the traffickers changed car registration and drivers a lot while they were transferring wildlife from Malaysia to Vietnam," he said.

He also accepted that it was very hard to get to influential people behind the wildlife trafficking because of loopholes in the law, and many traffickers do not provide any details about the people who hired them to smuggle wildlife.

The wildlife watch agency also found that Bangkok was a hub of wildlife trafficking, as many storehouses to keep the animals were set up here. Most of those arrested in the past year were based in Bangkok, followed by Nonthaburi and Samut Prakan, which were used for the illegal export of wild animals.

In a related development, the Customs Department last week arrested traffickers who smuggled five rhinoceros horns worth Bt12 million from Rwanda and destined for Laos. The horns were hidden inside small sculptures. The department found that the route of rhino-horn smuggling started from Africa and went through the Middle East and India to Thailand and Vietnam.


-- The Nation 2014-03-04

[FireMedic]

It would be interesting to see how many years of prison was sought for those violations. Confiscation is wonderful, but how much actual jail time will be served for those crimes? My guess is little to none. Fines only that are paid by the massive profiteers that pay off the governing bodies.

[noitom]

"They have developed tricks to avoid the eyes of police," he said.

The big trick is passing some baht to the man.

[chainarong]

While Thailand burns the scum still ply their goods , good to see someone is minding the shop , cause the PTP are not, just ask the rice farmer.

[Bkungbank]

Due to China economy grown people looking something more excotic foods believed to have medical rememdies for female on beauty purposes or enhance sex for male. example eating tiger penis will get stronger like tiger all these are wrong as due to deforestation tiger have no where to live and wild deer which main prey for tigers are gone fast.

All these extiction animal will only one day shown on our children books and comics not even zoo as kept animal delevope stress on animal themself.

[tomacht8]

It would be interesting to see how many years of prison was sought for those violations. Confiscation is wonderful, but how much actual jail time will be served for those crimes? My guess is little to none. Fines only that are paid by the massive profiteers that pay off the governing bodies.

Agree is a shame.

For example: Mr. Plodprasop Suraswadi

in 2005 Plodrasop was accused by the National Counter Corruption Committee and later found guilty and fired from his last bureaucrat post in 2007 because of his illegal permission to allow a trade export of one hundred Bengal Tigers to China by a private company.

He was a PM in last Parlament, now No. 10 on PT voting list,

and free on bail since 9 years until today.

Edited March 4, 2014 by tomacht8

[Rooney860]

Where the <deleted>> do you hide an elephant?

[simondan]

I wonder what the imbeciles who pay for these animal products because they think it will enlarge their tiny penis or some such rubbish think they will do when the last tiger, rhino etc has been killed?

Maybe airdrops of penis pumps into Laos and other centres of primitive superstitious hocus pocus like China migjt go some way to stopping this foolish trade.

Or what about an education campaign along the lines of 'You idiot! You just paid a weeks wages for a pile of dust with the same medicinal value as finger nails'?

Excuse my extreme contempt but I have a very pessimistic feeling that the demand created by Chinese so-called medicine will eventually result in multiple additional extinctions of various megafauna species.

Now if only we can convince the market that the gall bile and various obscure body parts of Chinese traditional doctors and the scum who supply them is stronger than Viagra, we may be onto a winner.

Sent from my GT-I9300T using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[MaxYakov]

Where the <deleted>> do you hide an elephant?

Behind a pile of 1000 baht notes?

[wilcopops]

I wonder what the imbeciles who pay for these animal products because they think it will enlarge their tiny penis or some such rubbish think they will do when the last tiger, rhino etc has been killed?

Maybe airdrops of penis pumps into Laos and other centres of primitive superstitious hocus pocus like China migjt go some way to stopping this foolish trade.

Or what about an education campaign along the lines of 'You idiot! You just paid a weeks wages for a pile of dust with the same medicinal value as finger nails'?

Excuse my extreme contempt but I have a very pessimistic feeling that the demand created by Chinese so-called medicine will eventually result in multiple additional extinctions of various megafauna species.

Now if only we can convince the market that the gall bile and various obscure body parts of Chinese traditional doctors and the scum who supply them is stronger than Viagra, we may be onto a winner.

Sent from my GT-I9300T using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

TCM is a major threat to the environment - it threatens both animals and plats. unfortunately the rarer the animal the more demisable and therefore valuable, it is.

Many people who swear by the efficacy of TCMs are in fat being conned - for instance checks on many "potions" have been found to contain pharmaceutical drugs. A recent case was a "dried ant powder" impotence cure - it worked!...it would do, it contained viagra.