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BANGKOK, Sept. 29 (Xinhuanet) -- Thailand's highway police on Tuesday
seized about 600 Malaysian and Indonesian pangolins, an endangered species of
anteater, in a truck to Bangkok, local pressreported on Wednesday.
Tipped-off police stopped a truck on the highway in the centralprovince of Prachuap Khiri
Khan, lying some 280 kilometers south of Bangkok.
They found about 600 pagolins in small plastic boxes on the truck and the
33-year-old truck driver admitted he had been hired to transport the pangolins
from the southernmost border province Songkala to Bangkok.
The truckload of anteaters was valued at about 1.5 million baht(about
35,741 US dollars).
The pangolins were from Malaysia and Indonesia as their scales were
different to those commonly found in Thailand, Somchai Pienstaporn,
director-general of the Department of Natural Parks, Wildlife and Plant
Conservation, was quoted by Bangkok Post as saying.
Edwin Wiek of the Wildlife Friend Rescue Center said several wildlife
trafficking gangs hired local drivers to transport endangered animals.
The normal smuggling route, said Mr Wiek, is to ship the pangolins from
Malaysia to Phuket and then to Bangkok. The animalsare then taken to Laos or
Vietnam and finally on to different markets.
Tens of thousands of pangolins, hunted for their meat for dishes and scales
for medicine, have been smuggled out of Thailandand the species is extremely
rare in the kingdom.
According to the conversation group of WildAid, population decimated in
Thailand and Laos. Now, hunters for the anteater target Indonesia and Cambodia.
In an upcoming global CITES conference on wildlife trafficking to be held
in Bangkok, delegations from 166 countries are expectedto discuss ways to
efficiently crackdown the business and protect endangered speciese including
pangolins.
The parties meeting of CITES, abbreviation of the UN Conventionon
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)
Conference, will be held in Bangkok from Oct. 2 to 16. Enditem
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