World Wide Fund for Nature-Malaysia (WWF-Malaysia), a leader in environmental conservation, would like to congratulate the Royal Malaysian Police, Department of Wildlife and National Parks Peninsular Malaysia (Perhilitan), Forestry Department Peninsular Malaysia and the Department of Veterinary Services and Immigration Department on the recent ‘Ops Khazanah’ in Taman Negara National Park, which was successful in making a number of arrests and confiscations in regards to poaching in the park.
This is indeed a commendable effort, and highlights the importance of inter-agency cooperation to curb exploitation of our natural treasures by unscrupulous people.
At another priority site for tigers, Perak Perhilitan has recently revived a similar initiative, namely the Belum-Temengor Joint Enforcement Task Force which consists of a number of agencies. In February 2014, 12 people including 10 Vietnamese were arrested for the theft of agarwood in Belum-Temengor. The operation was carried out by Perhilitan, Forestry Department, Perak State Parks Corporation and the Anti-Smuggling Unit.
Although wildlife might not be their main target, agarwood collectors are known to poach wildlife opportunistically while in the forest. Whilst such joint initiatives are to be commended, anti-poaching patrols and other enforcement efforts need to be further scaled up immediately by having sufficient permanent boots on the ground such as in other tiger range countries, for example as in Thailand, India and Nepal.
In the past six months, Perak Perhilitan has successfully made seizures in a number of illegal wildlife trade cases during their operations. Among the wildlife seized were slow loris, mouse deer and birds such as white-rumped shama, leafbirds, stripe-throated bulbuls and hill mynas. In addition, they were also previously involved in rescuing two high-profile endangered mammals in Belum-Temengor - a snared Malayan tiger and Malayan sun bear.
WWF-Malaysia believes that the arrests and seizures from these operations would act as a strong deterrent to poachers, although strong prosecution and heavy penalties towards the offenders also need to be imposed.
While waiting for designated and permanent anti-poaching rangers to be mobilised, it is hoped that similar ‘Ops Khazanah’ initiatives will take place but with greater intensity and consistency within the landscape to expand upon ongoing efforts to combat wildlife crime in Perak. We are running out of time and are losing on this war against poaching.
Inter-agency cooperation to curb poaching needs to be greatly heightened to complement the temporary lack of designated anti-poaching patrol rangers. We need to put in place such intermediary solutions, cause if we don’t, it is just a matter of time till we realise that tigers and other wildlife would have dwindled further, perhaps even to the point of extinction.
DR DIONYSIUS SHARMA is executive director/CEO, WWF-Malaysia.
