Crime Blotter: Orangutan Skulls, Turtle Eggs, and More

A weekly roundup of wildlife crimes.

By Jani Actman, National Geographic
Every Sunday, we note some of the previous week’s wildlife crime arrests and convictions around the world.

A male orangutan clings to a tree in a national park in Borneo. Two Malaysian citizens are accused of smuggling orangutan skulls and other animal parts into the U.S.
PHOTOGRAPH BY RALPH LEE HOPKINS, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

IVORY TRAFFICKING: Authorities in Gabon, home to half of Africa’s endangered forest elephants, arrested two men in connection with the seizure of 440 pounds (representing about 20 elephants) of ivory, reportedThe Guardian. One of the men worked for Gabon’s water and forest department.

ORANGUTAN SMUGGLING: Two Malaysian citizens were arrested in Oregon and accused of owning an online business that regularly smuggled endangered wildlife into the United States, announced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They allegedly used mail parcels to smuggle orangutan skulls and other animal parts.

LION POISONING: Two herdsman from the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya were arrested for allegedly planting the body of a dead cow laced with poison in response to an earlier lion attack on their herds, National Geographic reported. Eleven vultures and three lions, which were part of the Marsh Pride—a family of cats featured in the BBC documentary Big Cat Diaries—died from the poisoning.

ILLEGAL LOGGING: Law enforcement in Cambodia’s Mondolikiri province arrested five men—two Cambodians and three ethnic Vietnamese—after finding more than 40 lengths of illegally logged wood in their vehicles, according to The Cambodia Daily. The same day, authorities in the Pursat province also arrested two soldiers moving illegally logged wood in the back of a truck.

TURTLE SMUGGLING: Forest officials in Odisha, an eastern Indian state on the Bay of Bengal, foiled an attempt by poachers to smuggle a sack of narrow-headed soft shell turtles, reported The TeCake, a news website in India. The smugglers escaped but left behind at least 12 turtles in good condition.

ENDANGERED SPECIES SALES: A judge sentenced a trader based in Lancashire, England, caught dealing in rare and endangered species—including a dolphin skull and sperm whale’s teeth—to 24 weeks in prison, according to the Lancashire Telegraph.

TURTLE EGG TRAFFICKING: Two people from Hemet, California, have been indicted in connection with the smuggling of more than 900 eggs from olive ridley and kemp’s ridley sea turtles into the U.S. from Mexico, says Fox San Diego. It’s illegal to trade those species or their parts without permission from both governments.

TIMBER SMUGGLING: Police seized 1,000 tons of timber in the state of Kachin and in Sagaing region in Myanmar that was bound for the Chinese border, reported the Myanmar Times. Authorities don’t know the identity of the smugglers.

Fact of the Week: By the turn of the century, the sale of animal skulls and bones by mail-order operations and over the Internet was no longer an obscure hobby, according to the New York Times, which called it a “growing worldwide business.”

Source: This story was produced by National Geographic’s Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by grants from the BAND Foundation and the Woodtiger Fund. Read more stories from the SIU on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback and story ideas tongwildlife@ngs.org.

KRA Suspends Official Over Sh570 Million Ivory

By Gilbert Koech

Kenya: A Kenya Revenue Authority officer who handled the Sh570 million illegal ivory shipment seized in Singapore was yesterday suspended.

KRA Commissioner General John Njiraini said in a statement the directors of the exporting company that handled the cargo and the driver of a truck used to ferry the two 20-foot containers containing the wildlife trophy are being sought.

“So far, the truck owner has provided statements to the investigation team but the driver is still at large. The directors of the exporting company have absconded but are being sought,” he said.

Njiraini said other KRA port staff are being investigated for “appropriate actions to be taken after relevant details emerge".

Customs officials in Singapore on Tuesday seized 3.7 tonnes of illegal ivory from Kenya in the second-largest haul since 2002.

The ivory was hidden among tea bags, the haul consisted of 1,783 pieces of raw ivory tusk, four pieces of rhino horn and 22 teeth believed to be from African big cats — cheetahs and leopards and were on the way to Vietnam.

Source: allafrica.com

158 elephant tusks in 6 crates seized at Thai airport

Thai customs officials show 158 pieces of seized ivory in six crates during a news conference in Bangkok on Tuesday. (Apichart Weerawong/Associated Press)

Photo By Apichart Weerawong

Thai customs officials have seized 456 kilograms of African ivory — 158 elephant tusks in six crates — at Bangkok’s international airport.

The tusks were discovered Friday hidden in crates aboard a flight from Kenya. Customs officials displayed the haul Tuesday. The officials said they acted on a tip-off to seize the ivory, which was in crates labelled as handicrafts. No arrests have been made. The seized ivory probably will be destroyed. Ivory shipped to Thailand typically is used to make Buddhist carvings or jewelry. Thailand is also a transit point for other markets, including China.

The international trade in ivory was banned by an international convention known as CITES in 1989 as a measure to prevent the poaching of elephants, which has taken a huge toll on their numbers globally in recent decades

Malaysia seizes million-dollar ivory shipment: Customs

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia has seized elephant tusks and ivory handicrafts worth an estimated four million ringgit (S$1.6 million) en route from Kenya to Cambodia, a customs official said Tuesday.

The haul is the latest to indicate Malaysia has become an Asian transit hub in the illicit ivory trade, and follows the seizure of hundreds of African elephants' tusks in several busts by Malaysian authorities in recent months.

Customs inspectors seized the container last Thursday in Klang, Malaysia's biggest port, after it was unloaded from a cargo ship.

"The cargo manifest said the container contained handicrafts (soapstone) and it was loaded in Mombasa port in Kenya," Azis Yacub, state customs director of the state of Selangor, where the port is located, said in a statement.

Officials also found carved elephant and rhinoceros ivory. Azis said the container's final destination was the port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia.

In August, Hong Kong authorities seized nearly two tonnes of elephant ivory worth about $1.7 million in a shipment from Malaysia, which wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC has described as a major hub for illicit wildlife products.

TRAFFIC says that the illegal ivory trade has been rising globally since 2004 largely due to increasing demand in China, where ivory is often ground up and used in traditional medicine.

International trade in elephant ivory was banned in 1990, but since then several auctions of tusks from elephants that died naturally or were seized from poachers have been permitted in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.

Resource :  AFP

From 8am to 5pm ...

  Nearly 700 tusks recently seized in Malaysia (Photo credit: Star Publications (M) Berhad)

Azrina Abdullah

WHAT a busy few months it has been for Malaysia as it has yet again been pushed into the international wildlife spotlight. Aside from 1,764 elephant tusks seized by customs since July in Johor, Penang and Selangor (bad), there was also the rescue of animals this month from deplorable conditions in two Johor zoos after years of pressure from NGOs (good).

In addition, there was a troubling find of 12 snares in August near the East-West Highway, and other evidence to suggest that the Belum-Temengor Forest Reserve is increasingly becoming a poacher's haven, including those from Thailand and Cambodia (bad).

Much has been said about the lack of enforcement where wildlife is concerned because it is not a priority and in most cases, budget is sorely lacking to ensure enforcement officers have adequate resources to do their job well.
And after each criticism, the agencies always respond to say they have beefed up border controls and increased patrols across the peninsula. Then I read the response of Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) state director for Perak on the comment by two NGOs that her enforcement personnel had slackened in their patrols of the Belum-Temengor Forest Reserve.

She stated that this comment was not true because her officers patrol the East-West Highway points from 8am to 5pm every day. Yes, you read that right – 8am to 5pm. Is there something wrong with this statement? Does the director think poachers only hunt during office hours? If I was a poacher, this is a too good to be true statement – enter the forest after 5pm because no officers will catch me.

I am praying that this is a misquote by the reporter as it sends a despairing message to those working to save the Belum-Temengor Forest Reserve that Perhilitan is not serious about protecting our precious wildlife.
It does make you wonder how this matches with the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry's statements over the years that it has "increased patrols, beefed up security and enforcement staff". If 8am-5pm patrols are what the ministry meant by "increased patrols", it is no surprise that poaching in Belum-Temengor Forest Reserve is worsening.

The director also defended her department by saying the forest reserve is under the jurisdiction of the state, and not the department. Therefore, there are restrictions to what her officers can do. More excuses.
Perhilitan has mentioned repeatedly that the public plays an important role in providing enforcement agencies information on illegal wildlife activities.

What good would it do if we keep providing information but no action is taken because state and federal agencies cannot work together?
Granted that there are matters which the state and federal agencies cannot see eye-to-eye but will the issue of jurisdiction be the end of the Belum-Temengor Forest and its inhabitants as armed foreign poachers continue to pillage our biodiversity?
Their intrusion also poses a threat to our national security?

Resource article: thesundaily.my