Hung Yen (VNA) – Hung Yen police said on February 2 that they had seized a truck transporting 81 pangolins, a rare ani🗹mal species banned from trading.
This was the biggest ever wildlife smuggling case caught red-handed in the northern province.
When being checked, the truck’s driver Ngo Gia The could not show papers proving the legal origin of the pangolins.
He said that the animals were transported from the central region to northern Quang Ninh province, and then brought to China for sale.
The pangolins were handed over to the local Wildlife Rescue Centre.
The Education for Nature – Vietnam (ENV) has initiated a “zero tolerance” policy on illegal hunting, trading and use of pangolins – which are on the brink of extinction. The animal is sought after for its scales, which are believed to cure a wide range of diseases in Asian folk medicine.
According to the ENV, close to one million pangolins have been illegally hunted and traded over the past 10 years, with China and Vietnam considered the two most critical links in the transnational chain of illegal pangolin traders.
In Vietnam there are two species of pangolins: java Manis javanica and Manis pentadactyla.
According to the Vietnam Redbook published in 2007, pangolins mainly live in the central region, from Nghe An to Lam Dong, and in some northwestern mountainous provinces.
In recent years, Vietnam’s authorities have discovered many big pangolin smuggling operations in Hai Phong, Ha Tinh and Nghe An.-VNA
Vietnam wants to cooperate with international organisations and countries worldwide to preserve endangered wildlife animals, including pangolins which are on the brink of extinction due to illegal hunting and trading for meat and scales.
All eight species of pangolins are on the brink of extinction, and two out of the four species in Asia are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s red list of endangered species
Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has urged relevant agencies to take tougher measures to curb smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeit, especially in the time running to the Lunar New Year.
The Education for Nature – Vietnam (ENV) has initiated a “zero tolerance” policy on illegal hunting, trading and use of pangolins – which are on the brink of extinction.
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Illustrative image (Source: ENV)
