ILLEGAL ANIMAL TRADE IN THAILAND
Thailand is a hub for illegal wildlife trafficking. Authorities typically find rare turtles, tortoises, snakes and lizards that feed demand in China and Vietnam. Bangkok is regarded as one of the biggest wild animal smuggling centers in the world. It is a major gateway and transit area for animals on their way from source nations to buyer nations. The chances are whatever animal or animal part a buyer is interested in — whether it be live lemurs, crocodiles, gibbons orangutan babies, endangered cockatoos, bear paws, or tiger bones — it can be found in Bangkok with the right contacts.
Most animals arrive from Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and other countries and are shipped to China, South Korea, the United States, Europe and Japan. So many endangered wild animals have been smuggled into Thailand, and then exported out with false documents, that wildlife officials call Thailand, one of the "black holes" of "animal laundering."
Takashi Ozaki wrote in the Yomiuri Shimbun, “Animals poached in Indonesia and Malaysia are transported mainly via Thailand to China, where they fetch high prices. The animals are either transported alive for sale as pets or slaughtered for their meat, pelts, skins or medicinal properties. In 2009, 11 cases of animal smuggling were intercepted through September in Thailand. In January 2009, three dead tigers and a leopard were found in a refrigerated truck that was making its way from Malaysia to China via Bangkok. Thai police estimated the animals could fetch a total of 800,000 baht ($25,000). [Source: Takashi Ozaki, Yomiuri Shimbun, January 16, 2010]
In back street shops of Bangkok it is possible to buy lorises, pythons as thick as a thigh, civets and innumerable kinds of birds. If you have the money it is possible to arrange getting hold of an endangered gibbon. One trader, who said he made over a million dollars a year, told National Geographic he tried to send most of his cargo by plane. "When we sent them by ship, we would lose maybe half," he said.
Michael Casey of AP wrote: A recent visit to Chatuchak revealed cages of illegal Thai birds known as red-whiskered bulbuls, fish tanks full of endangered, radiated tortoises from Madagascar and furry, mouse-like marsupials from Indonesia called sugar gliders. All were being sold illegally into the international pet trade."We were in here five minutes and we saw illegal wildlife," Chris Shepherd, senior program officer for Traffic, said as he walked past aquariums filled with fist-sized radiated tortoises, which are among the rarest reptiles. "Nothing in here is legal," he added. "No one is checking. If they were checking, how could this place exist?" [Michael Casey, AP, December 23, 2006]
In September 2010, a two-month-old tiger cub was found hidden with stuffed tiger toys in the baggage of a woman heading from Thailand to Iran at Suvarnabhumi Airport. A 31-year-old Thai woman was arrested after the tiger was spotted by X-ray machines in overweight luggage. An official said the cub had been drugged and “was very calm, half asleep and half awake when we rescued him.
Walking catfish from Thailand were imported to Florida as part of the tropical fish trade. They walked away from their tanks and made their way to ponds and lakes and now there are millions of them in the U.S.
Bear Paw Restaurants, Tiger Products and Animal Smugglers in Thailand
Restaurants in Thailand serve endangered wild animals. The patrons at restaurants that serve bear and other endangered animal in Thailand are usually from China, South Korea, Taiwan or Hong Kong. Thai wildlife groups have appealed to the South Korean government to help them stop the "unnecessary murder" of bears that are "hunted, killed and butchered to feed the demand of Korea's market."
An American man, Robert Cusack, was sentenced to 57 days in jail for smuggling in exotic animals and rare orchids. After he arrived at Los Angeles airport from Thailand, during a routine inspection, he was told to open his suitcase. A bird of paradise burst out and started flying around the terminal. When asked if he had anything else, Cusack said, “Yes, I’ve got monkeys in my pants.” He then pulled out a couple of rare pygmy monkeys.
Much of the big time smuggling is done by syndicates that have representatives in countries throughout the world and bring animals into Thailand mostly by boat and overland through the porous borders with with Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. Orangutans often arrive boat from Indonesia or Malaysia. Bears are usually smuggled from Cambodia or Myanmar. Many of the tigers are breed in captivity.
Thailand has been accused of pushing tigers closer to extinction and not doing more to tackle the trade in tiger parts and products. Investigators have found three factories that process tiger parts into tiger products. The primary material source is believed to be captive tigers, Hundreds of tiger cubs are born in Thailand every year. They are often suckled by pigs so their mother can produce up to three litters a year. Some tigers are smuggled into China on Mekong River boats.
Rare Animal Trade Thrives in Thailand from Lax Laws
Denis D. Gray of Associated Press wrote: “Thailand's decades-old wildlife law also awaits revision and the closing of loopholes, such as the lack of protection for African elephants, and far stiffer penalties. "The bottom line is that if wildlife traffickers are not treated as serious criminals in Southeast Asia we are just going to lose more wildlife," says Chris Shepherd, TRAFFIC's Southeast Asia deputy director. "How often is anyone arrested? They just run off, they must be the fastest people on Earth." [Source: Denis D. Gray, Associated Press, August 15, 2012]
In AFP reported: “Thousands of tourists and locals throng the congested aisles of Bangkok's popular Chatuchak market every weekend, hunting for everything from a new pair of shiny leather shoes to a puppy. But among the racks of caged creatures is an illegal trade in endangered animals that wildlife police say they are powerless to stop as sellers take advantage of lax Thai laws and punishments. The illicit international trade in rare species is worth an estimated six billion dollars per year, academics estimate, and wildlife campaigners say much of that money now changes hands in the Thai capital. [Source: AFP, November 6 2008]
"It's difficult to arrest these smugglers," Lieutenant Colonel Thanayod Kengkasikij of Thailand's anti-wildlife trafficking taskforce told AFP. His problem is practical and legal as keeping an eye on smugglers as they move about the market is tough enough, but once arrests are made getting the courts to punish them is even tougher. "If the court handed down harsher verdicts to traffickers I think they would be more afraid of us," Thanayod said.
Months of police surveillance at Chatuchak, also known as JJ market, preceded a raid last March, organised with the help of wildlife charities TRAFFIC and PeunPa. During the operation, 40 undercover Thai officers arrested two traffickers attempting to sell three Madagascan Ploughshare tortoises, so rare that conservationists say only 300 remain in the world. In another section of the market a dealer was caught secretly selling slow lorises, endangered primates that live Southeast Asian forests. "Dealers stated openly that many specimens were smuggled into and out of Thailand," said Chris Shepherd, a senior programme officer for TRAFFIC. "They even offered potential buyers advice on how to smuggle reptiles through customs and onto aeroplanes."
The surveillance and raid cost campaigners thousands of dollars. Of the three men arrested, none went to prison -- two were not punished at all and one received a 20,000-baht fine, half the maximum financial penalty. These sort of meagre penalties frustrate wildlife campaigners. "The biggest wildlife traffickers in the world have decided to base themselves in Bangkok because they know that if they get caught the worst that can happen is about a 1,000 dollar fine," saud PeunPa's Steven Galster.
"Nobody's going to jail, not even the guys caught red-handed. Meanwhile the traffickers are laughing all the way to the bank, using Thailand as a base." The international law governing these crimes is called CITES -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species -- to which Thailand is a signatory.But the CITES provisions have not yet been fully translated into Thai law, and gaping loopholes still exist that Galster said will not close until attitudes throughout Thai society are changed.
PeunPa and TRAFFIC spent three years training police to understand the damaging environmental effects of wildlife crime, and now need to persuade judges too. "The police working on wildlife crime used to be called the forestry police, mainly focused on illegal logging and timber trafficking. We've been training them up to go after wildlife criminals," Galster said, adding: "They've gotten pretty good.""But they are seriously discouraged by the current law. They're raring to go but they need the law behind them," he said.
Police say new training seminars for judges are making a difference. "Judges and prosecuting lawyers have changed their attitude since we began campaigning -- they used to think that violators were just earning a living but now they understand they are causing environmental damage," said Thanayod.
But change is slow and the drafting of a new tougher law, which has been the subject of years of discussion, seems as distant a prospect as ever. "The situation's getting better but it's like with anything in Thailand: unless it's drugs or murder they don't think the police are going to take it all that seriously," Galster said.
Illegal Animal Poachers and Traders in Thailand and the Philippines
Poachers are acting hunting and captured endangered animals in Thailand’s national parks and wildlife preserves. They often work at night and are armed with automatic weapons. Many of them use snares and traps to capture animals rather than guns and other weapons.
An estimated 300 poachers are active in Khoa Yao Park alone. They have been accused of catching tigers, elephants, sambar deer and gaur. Many are not even after animals but after valuable wood and fungus. Scented aloe wood taken from Khoa Yao fetches up to $550 per kilogram.
Some poachers are professionals. Most are believed to be villagers trying ro make money any way they can. One former poacher told AP, “Some people want to change, but they need to get money to send their kids to school, or pay off debts. They go into the jungle to stop their families from going hungry.”
Michael Casey of AP wrote: “Traders say much of their success lies in bribing officials and forging documents to trick customs agents into thinking an animal was bred in captivity or can be sold legally — an easy task since officials have little experience identifying rare species."Before I reach a ferry, I make a call. I tell them, 'You didn't see anything,' and I leave an envelope" full of money, said a Filipino trader, who agreed to explain how the business works on condition of anonymity. "You know, in our government, nothing is impossible as long as there is money." Dealers said they also advise customers on how to smuggle small animals without getting caught. "My customers put them in suitcases, in socks. ... They wear loose paints, and put them in their underwear," said a Thai trader who identified himself only as An. "No problem. Thailand is not strict," he added. [Michael Casey, AP, December 23, 2006]
Mechanics of the Illegal Wildlife at the Bangkok Airport
Denis D. Gray of Associated Press wrote: “Thai and foreign enforcement agents, who insist on anonymity since most work undercover, say they have accumulated unprecedented details of the gangs, which are increasingly linked to drug and human trafficking syndicates. The sources say that when they report such investigations seizures are either made for "public relations," sink into a "black hole" — or the information is leaked to the wrongdoers. Such a tip-off from someone at Bangkok airport customs allowed a trafficker to stop shipment of a live giraffe with powdered rhino horn believed to be implanted in its vagina. [Source: Denis D. Gray, Associated Press, August 15, 2012]
"The 100,000 passengers moving through this airport from around the world everyday are oblivious to the fact that they are standing in one of the world's hottest wildlife trafficking zones," says Galster. Officials interviewed at the airport, one of Asia's busiest, acknowledge corruption exists, but downplay its extent and say measures are being taken to root it out. Chanvut says corruption is not the sole culprit, pointing out the multiple agencies which often don't cooperate or share information. Each with a role at Bangkok's airport, are the police, national parks department, customs, immigration, the military and CITES, which regulates international trade in endangered species.
With poor communication between police and immigration, for example, a trader whose passport has been seized at the airport can obtain a forged one and slip across a land border a few days later. Those arrested frequently abscond by paying bribes or are fined and the case closed without further investigation. "Controlled delivery" — effectively penetrating networks by allowing illicit cargo to pass through to its destination — is rare.
Chalida Phungravee, who heads the cargo customs bureau at Suvarnabhumi, says just the sheer scale makes her job difficult. The airport each year handles 45 million passengers and 3 million tons of cargo, only some 3 percent of which is X-rayed on arrival. The main customs warehouse is the size of 27 football fields.
But seizures are made, she said, including boxes of tusks — the remnants of some 50 felled elephants — aboard a recent Kenya Airlines flight declared as handicrafts and addressed to a nonexistent company. "We have cut down a lot on corruption. It still exists but remains minimal," she said, citing recent computerization which has created a space — dubbed "the Green Line" — between customs officials, cargo and traffickers. Galster says unlike the past, traffickers are no longer guaranteed safe passage, describing a daily battle at Suvarnabhumi with "undercover officers monitoring corrupt ones and smugglers trying to outwit them all." Such increased enforcement efforts in the region have slowed decimation of endangered species, he says, "but there is still a crash going on. If corruption is not tackled soon, you can say goodbye to Asia's tigers, elephants and a whole host of other animals."
Man Caught with 'Virtual Zoo' in Luggage
In May 2011, AFP reported: “A man has been caught trying to fly out of Bangkok with live baby animals, including leopards, panthers and a bear, in his luggage. The animals, which were all under two months old and had been drugged, were discovered in the suitcases of a man heading for Dubai on a first class plane ticket, the Freeland Foundation anti-trafficking group said. The man, a 36-year-old United Arab Emirates citizen, was waiting to check-in for his flight at Bangkok's international airport when he was apprehended by undercover anti-trafficking officers, according to the Freeland Foundation. [Source: AFP, May 13, 2011]
When authorities opened the suitcases, the animals yawned, said Freeland Foundation director Steven Galster, who was present during the bust. There were two leopards, two panthers, an Asiatic black bear and two macaque monkeys - all about the size of puppies. "It looked like they had sedated the animals and had them in flat cages so they couldn't move around much," Galster said. Some of the animals were placed inside canisters with air holes.
The man, Noor Mahmoodr, was charged with smuggling endangered species out of Thailand, according to Colonel Kiattipong Khawsamang of the Nature Crime Police. He said one of the bags had been abandoned in an airport lounge because the animals were being too noisy. Authorities believe Mahmoodr was part of a trafficking network and are searching for suspected accomplices. "It was a very sophisticated smuggling operation. We've never seen one like this before," Galster said. "The guy had a virtual zoo in his suitcases."
The Freeland Foundation said the animals were taken into the care of local veterinarians. "There's a pretty strong likelihood that some of them wouldn't have survived the flight in the condition they were in," Freeland's Roy Schlieben said. "The fact they were transported alive would indicate the person at the other end wanted to keep them in their residence or some sort of zoo, or maybe even breed them," he said. The anti-trafficking officers had been monitoring the man since his black market purchase of the rare and endangered animals, Freeland said.
Finding such an array of live mammals is unusual. In Thailand, leopards and panthers fetch roughly $5,000 a piece on the black market, but their value in Dubai was presumably higher, Galster said. It was not known if the animals were destined to be resold or kept as exotic pets, a practice popular in the Middle East. If convicted, Mahmoodr could face up to four years in jail and a 40,000 baht (about $1200) fine, Kiattipong said.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.
Last updated February 2025