Vietnam is looking to the Internet for effective solutions to prevent
wild animal trafficking as over 33 websites in the country are found to
host the illegal trade of 108 wild animal species.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has recently conducted a survey
in the field, the first of its kind in Vietnam , seen as a way to help
CITES Vietnam and concerned agencies outline effective ways to curb
the situation in the country.
WCS Country Director
of Vietnam Scott Roberton said that reptiles such as snakes, iguanas and
crocodiles have been found to be available for sale on the following
websites yeuthucung.com, arowana.com.vn, 5giay.com and rongbay.com. He
also mentioned that monkeys, elephants, squirrels and even tigers were
being sold on these websites.
The survey stated that
24 percent of wild animals are protected by Vietnam law, while a
different 24 percent are banned from trading by CITES and 17.6 percent
are listed under the global ‘endangered species’ list.
It also discovered that about 84 percent of wildlife species were
trafficked to be sold as pets, 9 percent for food and 1 percent for
traditional medicine processing.
At a conference
held in Hanoi on April 17, Deputy Director of CITES (Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)
Vietnam ’s Management Authority Do Quang Tung, said as a global
organisation, CITES actually started to prevent wildlife trafficking via
the Internet since 2004.
Hoang Xuan Trinh, Head of
the Forest Management Department’s Inspectorate Legal Department said
that poor management was blamed for the shortcomings in dealing with
wild animal trafficking via the Internet in Vietnam .
Le Duc Anh, from the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s E-commerce
Department, said that it was hard to verify the finer details of
advertisements for trafficked wild animals.
He
explained that looking only at the images posted on websites and
verifying whether they are wild or domesticated animals is very
difficult, and if they are domesticated animals instead of wild animals,
we cannot fine.
Anh further suggested that the
authorised agencies should raise the amount of the fines in a bid to
bring the situation under control.-VNA