Trafficking fight gets crack help
Expert team weeds out traders from online channels, though lax penalties still a problem, writes Apinya Wipatayotin
‘ Forest Falcon” an operation launched last year by the authorities to deter on-line wildlife trafficking faces a daunting task as traffickers get smarter.
The team was set up last April by Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation chief, Thanya Nethithammakul, to deal with the proliferating illegal wildlife trade, especially online activity.
The team has 18 staff with various skills, including academics to verify animal species, legal and computer experts.
Among major duties is to spend nights and days monitoring the social media activities of possible wildlife trading sites. The hard part is to make sure the traders are the real culprits as traders often use a proxy.
“It is harder to catch wrongdoers in the online world. And it is getting more difficult to gain access to information because the traders have adapted.
They create a Facebook account for the purpose of trading only with fake information to prevent any detection by the authorities,” said one of the team members. “Viewers would see hundreds of pages relating to the wildlife trade, but not all of them are the real ones,” he said.
The wildlife traders have also avoided keeping illegal wildlife at home.
They have changed it into a “make to order” trade, in which the wild animal will be presented for sale when the order has come. This is a way to save them from official raids on their house.
Meanwhile, public transportation, such as a bus, van, or motorcycle, are selected to carry the animals and the pick-up will be made at the bus stop, rather than through a personal meeting. “Most are small-scale traders as they know they are being watched by the authorities,” he said.
Online channels have become a new market and trading place for these traffickers.
That trend has cropped up in the past five years thanks to enabling technology.
Moreover, traders find the authorities are more serious about launching crackdowns, after pledging with the United Nations to stamp out illegal wildlife trading.
But the problem remains because these wrongdoers are often let off lightly by the law, said the official.
Regarding the punishment under the protected and preserved wildlife animal law, he said punishments for illegal wildlife trading are a 40,000 baht penalty, four year jail term, or both.
But in reality, this source said the court usually delivers a very light sentence.
“The trader might be fined just 1,000. Such a small fine makes it worthwhile to pay up and go back to the illegal activity.”
The difficulty withstanding, t he Forest Falcon team has been able to arrest wrongdoers.
Since its inception, the team has rescued 48 wild birds, 45 wild animals such as musk, turtles, and a python. It had secured 10 arrests in Ratchaburi, Bangkok, Samut Prakan and Nonthaburi province with 13 culprits.
The country’s law enforcement authorities had good luck in January when they arrested Boonchai Bach, a Thai of Vietnamese descent, cracking open the “largest wildlife crime case ever” in the country, the anti-trafficking group Freeland Foundation said.
“It’s like catching one of the Corleones,” said Steven Galster, the founder of Bangkokbased Freeland.
Mr Boonchai, 40, was arrested in Nakhon Phanom in connection with the smuggling of 14 rhinoceros horns worth US$1 million from Africa into Thailand in December, in a case that also implicated a local airport official and a Chinese and a Vietnamese courier, police said.
Mr Boonchai allegedly ran a large trafficking network on the Thai-Lao border that spread into Vietnam.
According to the Freeland Foundation, he and his family played a key role in a criminal syndicate that smuggled poached items including ivory, rhino horn, pangolins, tigers, lions and other rare and endangered species.
‘‘ The trader might be fined just 1,000. Such a small fine makes it worthwhile to pay up and go back to the illegal activity. THANYA NETHITHAMMAKUL CHIEF OF THE DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL PARKS, WILDLIFE AND PLANT CONSERVATION