Help 30 Women Fight Wildlife Crime in Vietnam

Last year, ENV’s crime fighting women made great progress across their various departments, in communications, handling wildlife crimes, and ensuring laws and policies were correctly applied. Our hard-working Wildlife Crime Unit handled over 3,700 wildlife crime cases, bringing our grand total to over 22,000 cases since ENV’s inception. This is more cases than any other year, showing how even in the face of Covid-19, these women are unwavering in their goal despite many delays and restrictions. This perseverance resulted in 929 live wild animals being rescued from the illegal wildlife trade, following calls to the ENV Wildlife Crime Hotline. On average, there were 9.3 new cases reported each day.  

Notable wildlife crime cases since our last report

• In November, a bear cub was seized in northern Vietnam, following its advertisement on Facebook by the seller. Collaboration by ENV and the police led to 3 subjects being arrested in connection to illegal trafficking of the 30 kg bear cub. The cub was relocated to Tam Dao Bear Sanctuary, where it can begin its new life safe from the illegal wildlife trade.
• A 6.5-year prison sentence was handed out to an exotic turtle trader in November, who was caught advertising 64 tortoises on Facebook. The species included radiated tortoises, Indian star tortoises, sulcate tortoises, 4 Burmese star tortoises and 3 leopard tortoises.
• 2 otter pups were rescued from the illegal wildlife trade, following a report to ENV by a member of the public. The subject had been advertising the otters for sale on social media, and according to him, they were sourced from the wild. This led to his arrest, and he is facing up to 5 years in prison under the law.
• 17 clouded monitors were seized from a residence in central Vietnam, and released back into the wild. The scale of these crimes resulted in the subject receiving 6 years in prison.
• In December, a subject received the largest prison sentence ever given for wildlife crimes in Vietnam. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempting to ship 55 pieces (126 kg) of rhino horn into Noi Bai Airport. He attempted this by creating falsified digital signatures to avoid Customs inspections. However, the cargo appeared suspicious, being heavy for a shipment labelled as ‘textiles. This led to customs officers finding the rhino horns encased in plaster.

Progress in ending bear bile farming

In December, the last captive bear in Son La province was transferred from a farm to Ninh Binh Bear Sanctuary. The bear was named Tu Do (Freedom), and has been settling in well in her new semi-natural home. This is great news as Son La became the latest bear bile farm-free province!

Big bear updates came in February, with 9 bears transferred from 3 facilities in Binh Duong province. While several bears still remain on farms in this province, they have made an incredible transformation from previous bear bile hotspot into an advocate for bears. All these bears were also rehomed to Ninh Binh Bear Sanctuary, where they will live out the rest of their lives, free from a cage for the first time in at least 17 years. This transfer brings the total number of bears left of farms down to 308, with over half of these in Hanoi. You can read more about this bear transfer, and a recent instruction issued by Hanoi People’s Committee on our website.

Maintaining and strengthening wildlife protection laws

Our policy and legislation team have been hot on the case, working to prevent wildlife crimes before they happen, and ensuring subjects are prosecuted to the full extent of the law when crimes are committed. This has included:

• Warning commercial farm owners of the legal penalties of purchasing wildlife that is not of legal origin. We work to ensure they don’t sell illegally sourced wildlife to restaurants or other buyers as ‘captive-bred’ and raised on farms, when they are, in fact, wild-caught and depleting the species population.
• Carrying out our prosecution training course in December, with the main goal to familiarize prosecutors with wildlife protection laws and offer guidance in how to apply these to real-world cases.
• After ENV’s correspondence with the authorities, an instruction was issued by Hanoi People’s Committee in January, urging all districts to strictly follow the directives for effective and safe wildlife management.
• Intervening in wildlife crime cases where the punishment did not meet those outlined by the full extent of wildlife protection law.

Raising awareness and mobilizing the public to report crimes

Our communications team have continued to share the message of wildlife protection and encouraged the public to report wildlife crimes to our Wildlife Crime Hotline. We spread information and awareness through our campaigns, which take the form of radio shows, TV public service announcements, viral social media posts, outreach and result in news stories in the media.

Some of the topics we have focused on include traditional medicine containing wildlife, with viral adverts containing the message, “Our lives are not medicines”, as well directly engaging traditional medicine practitioners to promote alternatives. We also raised awareness about the potential prison sentences that are handed out for various crimes, such as ivory crimes receiving up to 15 years in prison. The 4 public service announcements (PSAs) we released in 2021 were featured on ~60 TV channels, reaching millions of viewers. We also arranged a roundtable with journalists in central Vietnam to cover key advocacy issues, such as non-commercial tiger breeding facilities, and to build interest within the media around wildlife crime and conservation efforts.

Find out more about what we’ve been up to in our October 2021 and Nov/Dec 2021 newsletters. On page 11 of our most recent issue, you’ll find an exclusive interview with our undercover Offense Unit Team Leader, “The Woman with the Yellow Hat”.

Thank you, friend, for your continued support of our team of wildlife crime fighting women. While we like to believe our team is unstoppable, none of what we achieve would be possible without the support of people like you.

Links:

• ENV Website
• ENV Facebook