BANGKOK
The United Nations has marked World Wildlife Day by warning that increasing regional integration in Southeast Asia is facilitating international trafficking in ivory and endangered species as the region becomes a hub for such illegal activity.
Matthew Nice, U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime regional coordinator, said Tuesday in a statement released in Bangkok that additional law enforcement measures needed to be taken amid greater infrastructure investments and less burdensome border controls aimed at developing legitimate trade.
He stressed, “greater investments are also needed in law enforcement, justice and effective border management capacity to counter the rapidly growing wildlife trafficking throughout Southeast Asia.”
Most cross-border controls on the movement of goods among the ten ASEAN member countries have to be lifted by Dec. 31 this year.
In the last 15 years, Southeast Asia has become a transhipment hub in the illegal trade in wildlife, with police in Thailand regularly seizing shipments of rhino horns and elephant tusks, mostly coming from Africa.
Giovanni Broussard of the U.N. offices’s Global Programme on Combatting Wildlife and Forest Crimes said in the statement, “Rapidly growing illicit wildlife animal trade accelerates the extinction of large and endangered species.”
“Reverting this trend requires bold and immediate changes in the way governments address both the demand and supply of illicit wildlife,” he stressed, adding that more than 1,200 rhinos had been poached for the trade in African ivory last year.
While Southeast Asian wildlife such as elephants and tigers have been deeply impacted by the rise in trafficking, some less known species -- including nocturnal scaly pangolins, slow lorises and some varieties of fish -- are on the verge of extinction.
Last month, Thailand’s military government launched a campaign requiring owners and traders to register all ivory-made items before April 21, in an attempt to stem the illegal sale of ivory.
Thai laws have banned the trade in elephant tusks and ivory for several years, but ivory from domestic elephants is permitted, although discouraged.
It is estimated that more than 20,000 African elephants are killed each year for their ivory, much of it ending up in Thailand where it is turned into jewelry and trinkets. During the campaign’s launch, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha asked jewelry shops to start replacing ivory with alternative materials.
The U.N. office also emphasized that the large revenues generated by the illicit wildlife trade contribute to other criminal activities by transnational crime groups, including corruption and trafficking of counterfeit products, “posing far reaching concerns for the ASEAN region.”
