thailand wildlife trade

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*From Bangkok Post, August 16, 2005

 

Govt told regional help needed *

 

*/ /*

 

*MANOP THIP-OSOD *

 

The government should beef up cooperation with neighbouring countries to

fight wildlife trafficking since traffickers already have their own

transnational networks, a conservationist proposed in a seminar at Khao

Yai national park yesterday.

 

Steve Galster, representing Wild Aid, a San Francisco-based organisation

fighting the illegal wildlife trade, told the seminar on Khao Yai

conservation at the national park's office in Nakhon Ratchasima

yesterday that Thailand needed to join forces with neighbouring

countries to cope with the illegal trade of wildlife and plants.

 

He said this was because traders already had their own networks which

included middlemen in Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia who supplied

the wild animals to China.

 

He also called on the Thai government to impose harsher punishments on

traders whose business, he said, was made easy as currently they were

only fined if caught.

 

The illegal trade would have to be treated seriously like drug

trafficking because natural resources could not be restored once

extinct, Mr Galster said.

 

Roger Lohanant of the Thai Animal Guardians Association said some

organisations bred wildlife for trade in disguise as they had never

released their animals into a forest in years of operations.

 

Surapol Duangkhae, secretary-general of Wildlife Foundation of Thailand,

warned that Thailand had to abide by the Convention on International

Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) strictly or the Khao Yai-Dong Phya

Yen forest complex could lose its Natural World Heritage status that was

recently certified by Unesco.

 

The conservationists joined police, forestry authorities and

representatives of NGOs to discuss ways to protect Khao Yai national park.

 

Opening the two-day seminar yesterday, Pol Lt-Gen Thanee Somboonsap,

commissioner of the Central Investigation Bureau, said that the

government and the private sector as well as conservationists realised

the necessity of coming up with strategies to protect Khao Yai national

park.