Fishy shipment sniffed out
Authorities find live baby crocodiles in parcel heading to KL
SIBU: What was supposed to be a parcel of frozen fish contained five snapping live baby crocodiles instead.
The live reptiles were found in two white boxes couriered to a Kuala Lumpur address.
The package would have been successfully sent out if not for officers from Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) who intercepted it at Sibu Airport.
A manager of the courier company in Sibu when contacted yesterday said the incident happened on Jan 2.
“The cargo unit of the airport authority had rejected the two boxes and told us to take them back,” he said.
The manager, who declined to be named, said that they tried to contact the sender of the parcel to no avail.
“We believe that the particulars of the sender, which include his name, address and contact number, are all false,” he said.
He recalled that on Jan 2, a man came to his office with two boxes which he wanted to send to Kuala Lumpur.
The sender, had labelled their contains as frozen fish to fool authorities so that they could pass through the airport cargo unit.
After taking the items back from the airport, the company was worried that the crocs would die. They subsequently surrendered the crocs to the Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC) office in Sibu.
Its chief executive officer Zolkipli Mohamad Aton said a police report has been lodged over the matter.
Zolkipli also thanked the Sarawak Customs Department and the courier service company for their effort in preventing the protected species from being smuggled out of Sarawak.
He also called on the public to assist by informing SFC of any offences against wildlife. SFC hotlines are 019-885 9996 (Kuching), 085-438 455/739 523 (Miri), 019-822 3449, (Bintulu) and 019-888 3561 (Sibu).
He added that crocodiles are protected in Sarawak under the Wildlife Protection Ordinance 1998. A maximum fine of RM10,000 and a year’s jail will be imposed if one is found guilty of hunting, killing, keeping, selling or eating a protected animal.
Nevertheless, crocodiles in the state are now categorised under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) which allows sustainable harvesting of crocodiles from the wild for trade, provided a license or permit is first obtained from the authority concerned.
In November, The Star reported that using the postal system to traffic animals and other protected wildlife is uncommon – but not new either, said wildlife and conservation groups.
Serene Chng, a programme officer with wildlife trade monitor Traffic, said the organisation’s 2016 report Trading Faces – which assesses the use of Facebook to trade wildlife in peninsular Malaysia – have documented sellers on Facebook offering to deliver live animals by post.
Chng explained that using the postal route was convenient, and could be fast if using express post, and levels of detection can be low.
“It is worth noting that wildlife is not only sent via parcel post, but also postal cargo, where larger volumes of wildlife parts can be transported,” she had said.