200kg Malaysia-bound ivory intercepted at RGM Airport

At least 200 kilogrammes of ivory worth over half a million dollars was intercepted at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport on Monday, while destined for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) confirmed the interception yesterday and said it is on high alert. The owner of the ivory, which was boxed, was still not known by yesterday. The interception of the loot followed a joint operation by parks and security agencies at the international airport.

ZimParks spokesperson Mr Tinashe Farawo confirmed the development in an interview with The Herald yesterday. Investigations to track down the criminals behind the attempted smuggling of the ivory were underway. The Herald is reliably informed that the net is fast closing on the suspects.

“The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority officers at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, working with other security agencies, on Monday intercepted 200kg of ivory destined for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,” said Mr Farawo.

“Efforts to get the owner are underway.” Mr Farawo said the case had since been handed over to the Zimbabwe Republic Police. “The matter has been handed over to the ZRP Border Control and Minerals Unit,” he said. “As parks, we are on high alert. We will not allow such illegal activities to happen and this is in line with President Mnangagwa’s policy of zero tolerance on corruption.

“We are excited that we are moving in line with the Head of State and Government. I can assure you, we will get to the bottom of this matter, as the net is closing in on the culprits.” The country has 84 000 elephants, which it considers too many, but is unable to sell ivory due to CITES restrictions. Poaching has seen a good number of elephants being killed through shooting or poisoning using cyanide.

A total of 893 jumbos were poached between 2013 and 2016. Out of this number, 249 elephants were killed through poisoning using cyanide or shooting.

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ZimParks intercepts 200kg of Malaysia-bound ivory

THE Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks) on Monday intercepted a consignment of 200 kilogrammes of ivory worth over $1 million destined for Malaysia at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport amid reports that the contraband belonged to a top Zanu PF politician.

ZimParks spokesperson, Tinashe Farawo confirmed the development yesterday, saying the alleged loot was recovered with the help of other State security agencies.

“We recovered 200kg of ivory valued at more than $500 000 on the official market,” he said.

“The net is closing in on the owners because we have identified the travel agency that was facilitating the transportation of the consignment.”

According to sources at the airport, the consignment comprised of four boxes with carved ivory.

This was the first time efforts to smuggle ivory of such huge volume had been made. Previous attempts to nab the ivory smugglers had hit a brickwall after it was discovered the syndicates were linked to top officials.

In the latest incident, there was speculation that the consignment belonged to top officials.

Farawo said ZimParks would not hesitate to exercise its mandate following a directive by President Emmerson Mnangagwa to stamp out corrupt activities. Trade in ivory has been outlawed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to prevent extinction of elephants and rhinos. This has resulted in ivory finding its way to the informal market, particularly to Asian countries, where it is commonly used as an aphrodisiac.

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Plantations in Sabah losing millions because of elephants

KOTA KINABALU: Oil palm plantations are losing millions from damaged crops, sometimes spanning 30 hectares in total, when elephant herds raid the area, says the Sabah Wildlife Department.
Its director Augustine Tuuga told FMT that smallholders were hit the hardest as they could sometimes lose up to six hectares of crops in just one night.

“Elephant raids are a major problem for plantations in areas where elephants are found.
“These herds damage oil palm trees and eat the shoots, causing the companies to incur big losses,” he said, adding that Sabah Softwood Bhd for example, reported a loss of RM3 million a few years back.

He said that the problem of elephant raids had become so dire that most of the department’s ground staff were in Kg Gambaron in Telupid to deal with the issue, bringing to a virtual standstill, investigations into the recent case of suspected poaching in Kinabatangan.
The department estimated that there were only 2,000 Borneo pygmy elephants left in Sabah and although the number was considered acceptable to many, Tuuga said he was cautious about their survival rates if poaching continued unabated.

He conceded that most of the elephant poachers were locals, who killed the endangered animals mainly for their tusks.

“We found that these tusks were sold overseas but many also sold them to the Timorese who have a custom of offering elephant tusks as dowries.”

On Thursday, the department released a statement that it was investigating suspected poaching activities after an elephant carcass was found floating in the Kinabatangan River near Sg Koyah on Monday.

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Sabah Customs seizes elephant tusks, pangolin scales worth RM80.5 million

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Customs seized three tons of elephant tusks and five tons of pangolin scales, valued at about RM80.5 million, which were believed to be on the way to be smuggled through Sepanggar Port to another country on August 29.

Customs director-general Datuk Seri T. Subromaniam said the 1,148 elephant tusks, worth RM9.9 million, and pangolin scales, valued at RM70.6 million, were seized during a check on two containers declared as containing groundnuts on Aug 30.

"The elephant tusks and pangolin scales are suspected to be from Nigeria, Africa and had passed through the port of a neighbouring country before entering the country," he told reporters here today.

Also present was Sabah Customs director Datuk Hamzah Sundang.

T. Subromaniam said following the confiscation, a 43-year-old man had been remanded under Section 135(1)(A) of the Customs Act 1967 to facilitate investigations on suspicion of importing prohibited items.

He said investigations were also carried out under the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Act whereby the accounts of suspected individuals and companies would be suspended.

The final destination of the containers was believed to be China but the matter was pending Customs' investigation, he said.

He said Malaysia should not be regarded as a transit for smuggling of prohibited goods but needed to be viewed from the aspect of the department's success in curbing the activity even though it had passed through the port of a neighbouring country.

"I want to warn any syndicates not to use ports in Malaysia for smuggling, especially prohibited items," he added.

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Customs: Malaysia not the only transit point for wildlife smuggling

KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia is not the only transit point in South-East Asia being used by international syndicates to smuggle wildlife, says Customs Department director-general Datuk Seri Subromaniam Tholasy (pix).

He said the perception that Malaysian ports were key transit points for wildlife smuggling was not true, but rather, this indicated Customs' many successes against smugglers here.

"We know that smugglers are using other ports in neighbouring countries. I do not want to name but they are not taking the action that we are taking," he told reporters after witnessing the handing over of duties from retiring Sabah Customs director Datuk Janathan Kondok to his successor Datuk Hamzah Sundang, the current Kuala Lumpur International Airport director.

Subromaniam was referring to the successes by Customs in Sabah, which seized some 8,000 tonnes of pangolin scales on transit at the Sepangar port here and also the seizure of ivory through KLIA in July.

He stressed that the smugglers were not only using Malaysian ports, but also those in neighbouring countries, which go undetected.

On the seizure of RM100mil worth of pangolin scales, he confirmed that the scales were on transit to China but declined to reveal the country of origin.

"We are still investigating. I can't reveal much," he said, adding that they expect to charge a 43-year-old local suspect for smuggling banned goods.

However, he said that the Sabah Wildlife Department was also free to take action against the suspect under the state's wildlife conservation laws.

"We will act under Customs laws. The Wildlife Department can also act against him using protection laws. These are two separate offences so we have no problem with them taking action against the suspect," he added.

The Customs' seizures of elephant tusks and pangolin scales had raised concerns that Malaysia had become a transit point for wildlife parts that fetch high value in China and Indo-China countries.

Tusks and other body parts of elephants are prized for decoration as talismans and for use in traditional medicine, while pangolin scales were considered aphrodisiacs.

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Another Vietnamese Ivory Smuggler is Nabbed at KLIA

And on and on it goes. The smuggling of ivory into and out of Malaysia, that is.

Exasperating? You bet.

Encouragingly, however, Malaysian officials tend to be on the ball and keep making arrest. The latest such arrest has involved that of a Vietnamese national who was trying to take 36kg of partially processed elephant tusks out of the country via Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The tusks, which had been cut up, tied up into 10 packages and packed into two suitcases, would have been worth around RM300,000 (US$70,000) on the black market.

The Vietnamese smuggler had brought the African elephant tusks from Addis Ababa, using Malaysia as a stopover. If convicted of trafficking, he is facing up to three years in jail and a hefty fine under Section 135 (1) (a) of the Customs Act 1967 for illegal importing prohibited goods into the country.

A Malaysian Customs officer displays the ivory contents of one of the two suitcases seized from a Vietnamese trafficker at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

This latest case serves as yet another reminder that Malaysia continues to remain a hub for international ivory traffickers, several of whom are Vietnamese. In March last year Malaysian customs officials intercepted two Vietnamese men who were found to have 101kg of ivory inside their luggage. The same day officials discovered another haul of elephant tusks, amounting to 58 kilograms, in the bag of another Vietnamese passenger who had just flown in from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and was on his way to Hanoi.

But it’s a two-way street. Just as illicit shipments of ivory are brought into Malaysia, so other shipments are taken elsewhere from here. Only a couple of weeks ago customs officials in Hong Kong discovered 7,200kg of elephant tusks shipped in from Africa via Malaysia. Valued at around US$9 million, it was the largest haul of contraband ivory seized in Hong Kong in three decades.

“A string of recent seizures in Malaysia has put a spotlight on wildlife trafficking between Africa and Asia,” explains the anti-wildlife trafficking watchdog TRAFFIC. “[It] shows that illegal traders continue to use Malaysia when smuggling wildlife products into and through Asia,” said the group’s Acting Regional Director for Southeast Asia, Kanitha Krishnasamy. “It is important that African, Malaysian and Vietnamese authorities to work together to break the links in this cross-continental illegal wildlife trade.”

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Malaysia arrests Vietnamese man for 'ivory smuggling'

Authorities said the haul was worth about 300,000 ringgit (almost $70,000).

Malaysian authorities have arrested a Vietnamese man and seized a stash of elephant ivory worth almost $70,000, an official said Monday, highlighting the country's role as a hub for the wildlife-smuggling trade.

The man was detained Friday at Kuala Lumpur's main international airport after flying into the country from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, said airport customs chief Hamzah Sundang.

Officials stopped the suspected smuggler, whose identity was not revealed in the airport terminal as he was acting suspiciously.

When they checked his luggage, they found 10 packages containing elephant ivory weighing 36 kilograms (80 pounds) that had been cut into small pieces, which activists said was likely going to be fashioned into jewelry.

Authorities said the haul was worth about 300,000 ringgit (almost $70,000).

The man had been due to travel on to Vietnam, where there is high demand for ivory which is prized locally for decorative purposes and in traditional medicine.

The latest seizure underlines Malaysia's role as a transit point in the global wildlife smuggling trade. Earlier this month, Hong Kong customs officials discovered 7.2 tones of ivory tusks in a shipment from Malaysia.

The global trade in elephant ivory, with rare exceptions, has been outlawed since 1989 after populations of the African giants dropped from millions in the mid-20th century to around 600,000 by the end of the 1980s.

Anyone found guilty of importing rare animals or their parts into Malaysia can be jailed for up to three years and fined.

Kanitha Krishnasamy, acting regional director for wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, hailed the latest discovery by Malaysian authorities, which follows recent seizures of rhino horns and pangolins.

She said the operations were "crippling illegal traders from profiting from this business".

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Malaysia seizes 18 rhino horns worth $3.1M from Mozambique

The horns were declared as art objects in a forged air bill with a fake final destination, says Malaysian airport customs director.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA—Malaysian authorities said Monday that they have seized 18 rhino horns believed to have been smuggled into the country from Mozambique.

Airport customs director Hamzah Sundang said the horns were flown from Mozambique and transited in Doha before arriving at Kuala Lumpur’s airport on Friday. He said the horns, which weighed 51.4 kilograms and were worth 13.6 million ringgit ($3.1 million U.S.), were declared as art objects in a forged air bill with a fake final destination.

Hamzah said that custom officials made the seizure at the airport cargo warehouse based on a tip and that no arrests were made. The case is being investigated for smuggling of prohibited goods.

Rhino horns are believed to have medicinal properties and are in high demand in Asia.

In a report last year, the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC said Malaysia was a world transit hub for the flow of tons of illicit elephant ivory between Africa and Asia. It said seizures also linked Malaysia to Kenya and Uganda in the trafficking of 23 rhino horns from August 2010 to December 2013.

Conservationists say there are only around 30,000 rhinos left worldwide, compared to about half a million decades ago. All five remaining rhino species are threatened species, with three out of the five listed as critically endangered.

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2 rare elephant species killed for ivory in Central Sabah

Sabre and another large bull are killed by poachers for ivory, with both carcasses found 1,500m from each other, says authorities.

LAHAD DATU: Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) and Wildlife Rescue Unit (WRU) teams are deeply saddened by the killing of two wild bull elephants by poachers near Segama River, Kawag Forest Reserve.

A first bull was found on Dec 27 last year in the middle of an estate bordering Kawag Forest Reserve while the second bull, was a gorgeous sabre-tusked bull called Sabre, that was earlier rescued from a plantation near Tawau and translocated to Kawag Forest Reserve three months ago after being collared by DGFC and WRU.

“We found the remains of Sabre on New Year’s Eve, with the satellite collar next to the skull,” said DGFC Director Benoit Goossens in a statement, today.

He said Sabre was rescued from a plantation near Tawau early October last year and fitted with a satellite collar and released into a forest reserve near Danum where he thought the animal would be safe.

“We were obviously wrong. In the space of a month, Sabre and another large bull were killed by poachers for ivory, both carcasess were found 1,500m from each other, although the killings did not happen at the same time,” said Goossens.

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Tusks seized in Kalimantan may have come from two dead Jumbos in Sabah

As often, science can come to the rescue. This time for determining whether pygmy elephant tusks seized a few days ago in North Kalimantan, Indonesia, belonged to two male pachyderms that were recently killed in Sabah.

Indonesian officials stopped a woman who was carrying five elephant tusks in Nunukan in North Kalimantan last week, and Malaysian officials suspect that at least some of those tusks might have come from the two elephants that were found dead in Sabah in late December last year. One of the elephants, nicknamed “Sabre,” made headlines worldwide just a few moths prior for its tusks, which had been growing backward in a downward arc.

Malaysian officials now want to have DNA tests conducted on the tusks seized in Indonesia to see if the tusks had come from Sabre and the other male pygmy elephant killed recently in Sabah. “So far, we don’t know exactly where the tusks could have come from,” said Augustine Tuuga, director of Sabah’s Wildlife Department. “It can only be ascertained when the Indonesian wildlife authorities had taken a statement from the person or conduct a DNA analysis to compare them with the specimens of animals killed in Sabah,” he added.

The wanton murder of the two endangered animals has enraged conservationists and animal lovers far and wide, especially since both were killed within a protected area in Kinabatangan. The two elephants were found 1.5 kilometers apart, both with bullet holes in their skulls, indicating that both animals had likely been killed by the same poacher or poachers. The state’s Wildlife Department offered a RM10,000 reward to anyone who could assist officials in tracking down those involved in the elephants’ death.

Over the past years and decades, the number of Malaysia’s pygmy elephants has dropped precipitously, exposing the tuskers to the threat of extinction in the wild. The pachyderms have seen large parts of their ancestral habitats lost forever or else badly fragmented as vast swathes of forest have been cut down by loggers and palm oil cultivators.

Elephants need ample space for roaming far and wide as they forage for food. Because of the loss of their natural habitats, however, they have ended up coming into increasing contact with humans who have been encroaching on their habitats. This has increased the risk of conflicts between elephants and people. Sadly, poachers, too, have been gaining easer access to wild elephants owing to the relentless shriveling up of forests.

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Smallest elephants of the world being brutally killed

KUALALAMPUR: (Web Desk) – The elephants in Malaysia’s Boreno island are considered the smallest kind of the specie due to their small size. According to one estimate, these elephants took around 30,000 years to come into their current form.

According to foreign media reports, these elephants are generally hunted less compared to the African cousins but still the greed for ivory threatens these elephants to extinction. The cutting down of the jungles is also leaving these elephants with lesser and lesser space to live in. According to an estimate, only 1500 to 2000 of these elephants survive today.

According to zoologists, the hunting of elephants in Boreno island wasn’t considered a major issue previously but the recent developments show that the professional hunters are hunting down these animals to extract ivory.

On the other hand, Wildlife Conservation Society’s Vice President Elizabeth Bennet expressed great grief over the situation, saying that the killing of these small elephants was gruesome, especially when the world is finally rising up to save the African elephant and the efforts to close down ivory markets are at their peak.

She said that the remaining elephants could only be saved through strong action against those involved in heinous crimes against them and such markets are closed down.

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24 tons of ivory seized in Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur -

Malaysian customs have seized 24 tons of unprocessed elephant tusks worth almost $20 million, the largest haul in the country to date, officials said on Tuesday.

About 1 500 tusks hidden in two containers were discovered by customs officials at the country's main port of Klang, in the western state of Selangor.

The tusks had been hidden within pieces of timber inside the containers, which had originated from the west African nation of Togo.

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