KOTA KINABALU, Feb 16 — Celebrity Maya Karin has pledged to do her part in bringing more awareness to the plight of pangolins in Sabah, particularly in remote jungle areas where the mammals are viciously being hunted for global supply.
Maya, a known environmental activist, said that she has made many trips to Sabah, particularly Imbak Canyon and the Maliau Basin, and said she will be making more trips to other remote areas where the communities are less aware about how their hunting practices affect the global chain of wildlife trafficking.
“I’d be happy to come to Sabah again. As long as someone organises it, I’m keen to go and reach out wherever it may be,” she said during a question-and-answer session in conjunction with a World Pangolin Day talk here today.
The German-Malaysian actress/singer said that she will use her fame to reach the masses in conservation efforts, particularly on Twitter where she has over a million followers.
“I’m not an expert, so I’m just learning about pangolins myself, but my role is to reach out and engage people, like I did recently as ambassador for the ‘River of Life’ campaign,” she said.
Her efforts were welcomed in Sabah’s battle to save its pangolin population from the ravages of the wildlife and exotic meat trade, where the mammal’s meat and scales are considered a delicacy with nutritional properties.
Although the number of pangolins in Sabah cannot be ascertained due to their spread-out nature, experts agree that the population has dwindled significantly over the years.
A week ago, authorities here uncovered a factory processing pangolins and other miscellaneous wildlife weighing up to 30 tonnes and valued at RM8 million.
The total haul included about 1,800 boxes of frozen pangolins stuffed inside three refrigerated containers, 572 more frozen pangolins in six freezers, 61 ‘live’ pangolins in cages and in a car boot, and 361 kg of pangolin scales.
Two bear paws and the carcasses of four flying fox were also seized.
A local man was the factory manager, and believed to have a major role in the operations which have been running for over seven years.
A decade ago, TRAFFIC estimated that about 22,200 pangolins were killed, with 834.4kg of pangolin scales being supplied to syndicates during a 13-month period between May 2007 and January 2009.
Since then, Sabah has emerged as a transit point in the global trafficking of pangolin scales, after a series of seizures of African pangolin scales from Sabah’s Sepanggar port terminal and Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Sabah has been implicated in over 40 tonnes of pangolin smuggling since August 2017, including 13 tonnes of African pangolin scales and the recent seizure.
TRAFFIC’s senior communication’s officer Elizabeth John said that it was critical for Sabah to use information from the bust to investigate and flush out the entire network and discover more about the operations of the syndicate.
“It is also imperative that DNA testing on all seized items is done as it may aid understanding into the sourcing and distribution of the pangolins by this network,” she said, adding that it was important for Malaysia as a whole because of its role as a source for pangolins.
Sabah Wildlife Department public relations officer Siti Nurain Ampuan Acheh said that the information gathered from last week’s record-breaking raid would be put towards uncovering the syndicate’s operations and hopefully, lead to more raids.
“We’ve already made another seizure yesterday, a week after the first raid,” she said, referring to the arrest of a Sarawakian man in possession of 23 ‘live’ pangolins believed to be in transit from Lawas to Keningau for sale.
Nurain said that the challenges faced by the department’s small enforcement team varied.
“The demand is so high that the pangolin fetches such a high price that could feed the local small-time hunter’s family for a week in some cases, perpetuating the local communities,” she said.
Domestically, 1kg of pangolin meat fetches RM200 while the international price goes up to three times that. The demand makes it irresistible for an international organised crime ring.
The animal’s docile nature and predictable eating habits made it easy to hunt and Sabah’s porous borders in addition to lack of awareness from local enforcers and villagers made enforcement efforts a real struggle.
However, Nurain said that the continuous effort to educate the public was beginning to show results, and has resulted in more tip-offs and reactions.
“In the last two months, we’ve had members of the public calling us to surrender pangolins that they’ve bought off local hunters. It’s a good act, but it’s discouraged in the way that it perpetuates the demand,” she said.
