Wild News

The Police, Customs and Perhilitan (Department of Wildlife and National Parks) Departments are having a wild time this past few days. Yesterday, the wild raid at a warehouse literally killed 2 birds with one stone. The police who were expecting to find stolen cars at a warehouse in Kuala Lumpur discovered more that they could chew. Together with the 42 stolen vehicles, valued at more than RM1million, they found :

A pair of the rare Bird of Paradise, also known as Cenderawasih in Malay, which supposedly has the power to bring good fortune to its owner. The pair is said to be worth RM1mil on the wildlife black market.

Other rare birds seized in the 3am raid were the blue-crowned Hanging Parrot, the black-coloured Palm Cockatoo and the white rump Shama. Altogether there were about 700 birds some of which had died.

Among the caged animals found at the warehouse were leopard cats, albino pygmy monkeys and numerous domestic cats, believed to be kept by their captors to cross-breed with wild cats to produce exotic offspring.

The Kuala Lumpur Wildlife Department deputy director Celescoriano Razond was reported to have said that  over 20 species of the animals and birds found at the warehouse were listed as protected wildlife.

Today's Star reported another rare find. Two luggage bags containing protected rare animals were confiscated by the Customs Department at KL International Airport.

This time it was the Director General of Perhilitan Datuk Abd Rasid Samsuddin who chose to report to the media that among the animals were 369 Radiated Tortoises, five Madagascar Tortoises, 47 Tomato Frogs and several chameleons. Imagine all these animals were packed in two hand luggages brought in by two women from Madagascar. (Reminds me of the animation movie "Madagascar").

The tortoises were bound with masking tape to prevent them from moving, while the chameleons were stuffed in socks to prevent detection. Imagine the pandemonium it would have caused had all the animals got loose in the plane!

In another case, Perhilitan officers seized products made from parts of endangered animals from a shop in Petaling Jaya. They recovered five tiger claws, two beaks of rhinocerous hornbills, two Sambar deer trophies, a handbag made from Asiatic cobra skin, a pair of shoes made from python skin, three feathers from Birds of Paradise, one Barking Deer trophy and 96 trophies made from elephant tusks.

I can understand the need for some people to be seen with exotic animal hides on their hands and skins but to believe that these rare animal parts provide sexual prowess is a bit hard to swallow. If one brings any living thing (animals and plants) one needs to abide by quarantine laws. Bringing them illegally is like opening the floodgates. What if these animals are carriers of dangerous diseases like ebola. We already have problems with bats, rats and domestic animals being carriers of dangerous viruses.

As they say, once the demand stops, the trafficking of these animals will also ceased. But more need to be done to get the demand to come to a halt.Full stop.