Help 30 Women Fight Wildlife Crime in Vietnam

Dear Friends,

Since March 2021, ENV's team of 30 women have made huge strides in protecting wildlife by addressing wildlife crime in Vietnam and further educating the public to protect wildlife. The following achievements could not have been possible without you, our loyal supporters!

From the beginning of April 2021 to the end of June 2021, ENV's all female Wildlife Crime Unit successfully resolved more than 700 wildlife crime cases! From these public reports of wildlife violations to ENV's Wildlife Crime Hotline, our team facilitated the safe rescue of 362 live wild animals from Vietnam's illegal wildlife trade. The species that have been confiscated and transferred to rescue centers or released back into the wild include bears, pangolins, lorises, otters, sea turtles, gibbons, birds of prey, macaques, snakes, freshwater turtles and tortoises, and even a spotted linsang, among others. Additionally from April to June, ENV helped law enforcement arrest more than 10 wildlife traffickers by setting up sting operations in cooperation with police. 

One of the most notable recent cases was the largest takedown of a pangolin scale trafficking network in Vietnam! From January to March 2021, ENV investigated the network, working with local authorities to carry out a sting operation which saw the arrest of 4 pangolin scale traffickers and the confiscation of 984 kg of African pangolin scales. Sadly, this seizure is equal to 3,936 pangolins, however, ENV's Policy & Legislation Team will continue to follow the prosecution of the case to ensure appropriate prison sentences are handed out. 

Speaking of, ENV's all female Policy & Legislation Team has secured many landmark sentences in multiple wildlife criminal cases recently. For example, in June 2021, ENV's team ensured the first-ever prison sentence in Vietnam for possession of African pangolin scales! Since 2018, ENV has been working with the court to ensure this case went to trial, overcoming multiple obstacles such as lack of legal protection for non-native species, and needing an official valuation of the pangolin scales which proved difficult due to the scales being black-market goods. Through persistence and determination of the ENV team, the trafficker was finally sentenced to 5 years and 3 months in prison for possession of 780 kg of African pangolin scales.

Another prosecution success includes the longest prison sentences ever in Vietnam's history for marine turtle trafficking, 12 and 10 years in prison for 2 traffickers arrested with 39 critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle "trophies" after ENV investigated the case for 7 years and finally set up a successful sting operation.

For more news on the legal team's progress to secure effective responses from the criminal justice system in dealing with wildlife crime, you're invited to read the annual Wildlife Criminal Prosecution Review.

In further news, the progress to end bear bile farming in Vietnam has made headway, with 7 more bears transferred to rescue centers in June 2021 and an illegal bear confiscated from a bile farm in April 2021. Furthermore, in June, Lang Son province became the 40th bear-farm free province in Vietnam! Currently, ENV continues to work with authorities to get the remaining ~340 bile bears rescued from bile farms and safely relocated to bear sanctuaries. 

And finally, ENV's Public Awareness Team released 2 Public Service Announcements (PSA) in recent months and will be releasing a third in July 2021. The first PSA of 2021 was titled "Safer with Science" and was aimed at steering the public away from wildlife rememdies, and to choose modern medicine instead. The PSA was very popular amongst the Vietnamese public as it used comedy to reach the audience. The second PSA was titled "Bear Karma" and personified the experience bears endure when being exploited for their bile. By utilizing the concept of karma, which is a deep rooted belief in Vietnam, we aimed to reach more people in a way they can understand and empathize with the message. Both of these PSAs were aired on dozens of TV channels in provinces across Vietnam, and distributed virally through online articles about the PSAs and ENV's social media which reaches more than 12 million people in Vietnam each year.

The Public Awareness Team also continued to run daily ads on Vietnam's most listened to radio station, Voice of Vietnam (VOV), and aired monthly shows on VOV about different wildlife trade topics such as the movement to end bear bile farming, exotic species in Vietnam's wildlife trade, and one of ENV's newest wildlife trade reports, Consumer Wildlife Crime Reduction Campaign 2019 – 2020.

Friends, this critical work to protect wildlife across the globe from Vietnam's illegal wildlife trade could not be possible without you and your continued support. Thank you, from all of us at ENV, for protecting wildlife and making sure long-term change is possible, safeguarding a sustainable future for Earth's endangered species.