Rare Interviews Reveal How Fishing Boats Traffic Tiger Parts, People Between Malaysia and Vietnam: Study

Media Contact: Susie Weller Sheppard, (347) 446-9904, sweller@panthera.org.

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Actions to prevent debt bondage and close illegal fishing loopholes would assist in recovery of the Critically Endangered Malayan tiger

New York, NY – A study released today by Panthera, the wild cat conservation organization, the Jeffrey Sachs Center at Sunway University, and ZSL, exposes a nexus between the lucrative illegal trade in tiger parts, and human trafficking and forced labor aboard fishing vessels in the South China Sea.

The economic challenges facing the fisheries sector in countries like Malaysia and Vietnam, combined with the challenges in regulating migrant worker employment, created conditions for the trafficking of people and wildlife.

Over six months, a researcher from the Jeffrey Sachs Center, Sunway University, under a project supported by Panthera, was able to gather insight into the organization and resilience of these networks to law enforcement by interviewing 53 individuals with knowledge of fishing boat smuggling routes and wildlife trade between Malaysia and Vietnam. Their responses shed light on key practices, roles, and places involved in tiger smuggling — and how they converge with other types of crime in the region. The researcher connected with poachers; transporters; brokers — those involved in managing logistics for Vietnamese workers and traders in Malaysia; traders — those engaged in buying and selling wildlife products; and consumers, who primarily bought the end product. These findings identified key interventions along the supply chain to reduce the poaching of tigers.

Panthera Counter-Wildlife Crime Research & Analytics Lead and lead author, Dr. Rob Pickles, stated, "Criminal groups are entrepreneurial and adaptive and can capitalize on emerging opportunities. Understanding how and where these networks converge provides law enforcement agencies with a wider range of options for disrupting wildlife trafficking and recovering the tiger."

Tiger poaching and trafficking for body parts is of particular concern because the Malayan tiger is currently Critically Endangered, with just under 150 individuals remaining in the wild. Nearly 6,000 species of flora and fauna have been seized in global trade between 1999 and 2018 alone, driving biodiversity decline and impacting public health, security, and economic development. Yet, researchers found that the trade is not always lucrative for everyone involved — and that many are subject to worker exploitation crimes in the form of indentured labor and debt bondage. Interviewees reported instances of forced labor and child labor on fishing vessels conducting illegal fishing and transportation of people and wildlife products.

Poverty is one driver to entering the illegal wildlife trade. The majority of poachers active in Malaysia come from Quang Binh province of Vietnam — a poor, rural, and ruggedly mountainous province that has proven relatively more vulnerable to climate shocks than other provinces. Residents have good bushcraft skills and, with few work opportunities, many are willing to take on the tangible risks of entering the wildlife trade, which include fines and a prison sentence. Some also plunge their families into debt to meet the costs of travel — and they continue racking up costs of living debt, such as housing, food, and equipment, while in Malaysia. By researchers’ calculations, it can take three months long poaching trips into the forest before they’re able to break even — a heavy burden that incentivizes more kills. Once in Malaysia, travel documents and forms of identification are often confiscated by poaching network managers, ensuring that poachers have few options to escape debt traps.

“Our researchers were able to identify the importance of the network manager role as a lynchpin in organizing poaching operations in Malaysia and the onward shipment of tiger products. Investigating and prosecuting these individuals remains an important tool to disrupt trafficking operations — but we can’t arrest our way out of a problem or over-rely on the criminal justice system. Successful prosecutions are difficult to achieve – so we need to explore other approaches, such as highly targeted behavioral change interventions, that can run in parallel to arrests and prosecutions,” says Dr. Gopalasamy Reuben Clements, coauthor of the study and ZSL Sustainable Finance Specialist.

Malaysia has substantially increased the severity of punishment for wildlife crime in recent years, and there are indications that the certainty of detection and arrest of tiger poaching has improved in some areas.

Maritime operations by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA), established in 2019, have seized thousands of boats with contraband valued at over USD 150 million. Vietnam has also deployed fisheries control boats to patrol the maritime border, push boats back into Vietnamese waters, and implement the Boat Monitoring System (VMS) to track boat activity.

Panthera and Sunway University's research shows where there are missed opportunities in crime prevention that could work alongside enforcement to accelerate the decline of this problem. As such, risks associated with poaching must be clearly communicated to potential poachers both within Malaysia and in Vietnam before embarking on a poaching expedition. Understanding how the recruitment of poachers works within key areas such as Quang Binh should be an important next step in identifying intervention points earlier. Improving governance and oversight of foreign worker employment in Malaysia and Vietnam, and dismantling structures that enable corrupt actors to exploit migrant workers may also have cascading benefits in the illegal wildlife trade by reducing the strength of the need for income top-up.

Panthera has conducted wild cat conservation efforts in Malaysia for nearly a decade, focusing in Peninsular Malaysia on monitoring and protecting the Malayan tiger, leopard, other wild cat species and their prey through Project Kenyir and Project Tekai in the Greater Taman Negara landscape. On the island of Borneo, Project Dupot monitors and protects the Sunda Clouded Leopard and other Bornean small cats and their prey. We work in collaboration with the Malaysian Government and other conservation NGOs to enhance wildlife protection efforts across our project sites in Malaysia.

About Panthera

Founded in 2006, Panthera is devoted to preserving wild cats and their critical role in the world’s ecosystems. Panthera’s team of leading biologists, law enforcement experts and wild cat advocates develop innovative strategies based on the best available science to protect cheetahs, jaguars, leopards, lions, pumas, snow leopards, tigers and the 33 small cat species and their vast landscapes. In 39 countries around the world, Panthera works with a wide variety of stakeholders to reduce or eliminate the most pressing threats to wild cats—securing their future, and ours.

About ZSL

Founded in 1826, ZSL is an international conservation charity, driven by science, working to restore wildlife in the UK and around the world; by protecting critical species, restoring ecosystems, helping people and wildlife live together and inspiring support for nature. Through our leading conservation zoos, London and Whipsnade, we bring people closer to nature and use our expertise to protect wildlife today, while inspiring a lifelong love of animals in the conservationists of tomorrow. Visit www.zsl.org.

About Jeffrey Sachs Center, Sunway University

The Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development at Sunway University is borne out of a partnership between the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network Association (SDSN); a strategic collaboration on sustainable development as the United Nations enters the first year of implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. As a regional center of excellence that advances SDG achievement in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, the center focuses on impactful research and policy practice, delivering world-class programs to train and empower a new generation of students, practitioners and policy leaders. Visit https://sunwayuniversity.edu.my/jsc.