SAFARI WORLD: Zoo owner faces smuggling charge

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SAFARI WORLD: Zoo owner faces smuggling charge

Published on Jul 30, 2004

100 orang-utans believed to have

been illegally imported from Indonesia

The owner of Safari World will be charged with

illegally importing orang-utans, Forest Police commander Maj-General Sawek

Pinsinchai said yesterday.

Safari World managing director and owner Pin

Kiewkacha is accused of violating provision 23 of the Wildlife Conservation

Law, for importing orang-utans without permission, and provision 53, for

concealing the wildlife.

The two offences are punishable by up to four

years in jail and a Bt40,000 fine. Pin will be

summoned to face his charges twice and if he does not turn up, an arrest

warrant will be issued, Sawek said.

A team of Indonesian forestry officials and police

are due to tour Safari World, on the eastern outskirts of Bangkok, at 10am

today to inspect the orang-utans seized by police late last year that have been

kept in captivity at the zoo.

Forestry Police who raided the zoo found 115

orang-utans, five of which have since died. The zoo claims it had permission to

possess them.

Dr Widodo S Ramono, director of the Biodiversity

Conservation Ministry of Forestry, Dr Willie Smits, chairman of BDS-Indonesia,

the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation, Profauna Indonesia and the

Indonesian press will request a DNA test of the orang-utans to determine if

they are from Indonesia.

" We suspect the orang-utans in Safari World

were illegally smuggled from Borneo. Farmers there fell trees for

plantations, and they probably sold the wildlife, " Widodo said.

Pin said the orang-utans - only about a dozen of

which were registered - were either bred in the zoo or donated. But activists

say there is no way the small number of females legally registered at Safari

World could have bred so many babies, given that well over half of them are

only a few years old.

Sawek said officials at Kasetsart University would test the DNA of the orang-utans and that it was not

initially necessary for the Indonesian team to test the animals' DNA.

At a press conference, Thai and Indonesian

wildlife groups spoke of the urgent need for an Asean taskforce to combat the

illegal wildlife trade. They also discussed a raid conducted several days ago

by Forestry Department officials on the Wildlife Friends Rescue Centre in

Phetchaburi.

The Foundation's Edwin Wiek said legal advisers

for Bangkok MP Siri Wongboonkerd believe the raid was illegal and told him

(Wiek) he should lodge an official complaint.

" Forestry Police chief Sawek refused to

arrest me today, and virtually said I'd done nothing wrong, " he said

later.

He believed the raid was conducted to intimidate

him and other wildlife activists into ceasing their campaigning about the

orang-utans at Safari World. Bangkok will stage a major conference on the trade in endangered species

in October, so the spotlight is on local authorities.

Sirinart Sirisunthorn, Jim Pollard

THE NATION