Wildlife smugglers search the world for countries with weaker enforcement policies and when they find one, they route their illegal trade through that country, said lawyer Bryan Christy, author of widely-acclaimed book The Lizard King –The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers.
"To understand this, one needs to only look at the number of high-technology multinational companies that have made Malaysia home. Companies recognise when laws are favourable to business. So do smugglers. Strong protections for investment attract good companies; weak protections for wildlife attract others."
In the book, US Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent George Morrison, who arrested reptile smuggler Anson Wong in 1998, "refers to Malaysia as ‘Fortress Malaysia’ because Anson flourished so easily," said Christy, clarifying that Malaysia certainly had officials committed to wildlife protection.
"But without stronger laws and policies, it will remain ‘Fortress Malaysia.’ Malaysia is in a difficult geographic position and it is what security experts refer to as a "choke point," a place through which significant resources pass on their way to the world.
"The entire world counts on a handful of countries to protect its wildlife — and Malaysia is one of them," added Christy.
For over 10 years now, wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC Southeast Asia, the Malaysian Nature Society, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the WWF-Malaysia and other concerned Malaysian people have pressed for stronger wildlife laws.
An online petition on this has been started early this month at www.petitiononline.com/MYLaw/petition. html by the four NGOs and the target is 100,000 signatures by June next year.
"Wildlife crime is still a crime.
"Source countries and consumer countries need to treat them so. Wildlife smugglers steal what the world values most," said Christy.
To conduct business on such a large scale, he said illegal wildlife traffickers forged documents, laundered money, smuggled across borders and bribed government officials.
"In some cases (such as for elephant ivory, sturgeon eggs, or Malagasy reptiles) they even murder. They do all the things we think of as deplorable crimes but because they traffic plants and animals, we treat what they do as an environmental issue, not a criminal issue."
And in this gap between the environment focus and crime could be found smuggling's most appealing aspect, Christy explained. "Unlike crime involving theft, forgery, money laundering, bribery or murder, wildlife criminals face almost no penal risk.
"Traffickers are rarely caught, and when they are, chances are that nothing significant will happen to them. In the US, we refer to the penalty most wildlife smugglers get as "a ticket," as in a parking ticket."
Even a country with strong enforcement policies, such as Australia, can usually only protect wildlife within its own borders.
"Wildlife is the most innocent of victims, and yet around the world we offer it almost no international protection," Christy said, adding he was "very encouraged by the immediate response of Malaysian Customs, which (in reply to an article in the New Sunday Times in September), had committed itself to looking into the situation described in my book."
Christy said that everything written in The Lizard King is documented, including by audio tapes secretly recorded by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and through emails, faxes, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) permits, court plea agreements and other primary sources.
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