A magistrate's court in Muar is scheduled to hear today the case of a man charged with poaching under the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972.
The Malaysian was allegedly caught with the carcasses of various types of bears, believed to have been from a forest reserve in Johor.
There were 50 offences under the Act that were brought to local courts last year.
Since 2002, the army has been roped in to trawl the forests for poachers, in collaboration with enforcement officers from the Wildlife and National Parks Department.
In the last five yeas, about 80 foreign poachers have been caught and charged in court. Most were Thai nationals, but there are a growing number from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.
Those found guilty were fined, jailed and some given two strokes of the rotan.
The department has faced difficulties in catching foreign poachers for years. Foreign poachers are armed and its enforcement officers are trained to control wildlife, not hunt poachers. So that was why the army was called to assist.
Joint efforts by the department and the army uncovered 173 illegal camps and 73 wildlife snares in numerous national parks in the peninsula, where many poachers are prepared to be based for months at a time.
This article was taken from: the malay mail: news 7 november 2008
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