- A recent analysis by wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC found that from 2019-2024 at least 28 seizures of trafficked wildlife occurred in or near Taman Negara, Malaysia’s oldest national park and a hotspot for biodiversity.
- The seizures include parts from pangolins, tigers, sun bears, leopards, elephants and other threatened species.
- During that period, 15 animals were captured alive, while 499 wildlife parts were confiscated.
- Experts say the high number of seizures and arrests indicate that interagency collaborations and on-the-ground enforcement are yielding results, but also that poaching is a serious and existential threat to the park’s biodiversity.
Taman Negara, Peninsular Malaysia’s premier national park, is celebrated for its extraordinary biodiversity centered around a 130-million-year-old tropical rainforest that’s believed to be the world’s oldest. Within it, a remarkable variety of plants and animals take shelter. However, this wealth of wildlife has also made it a target for traffickers, disrupting the park’s delicate ecosystem.
A recent analysis by wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC revealed that at least 28 seizure incidents involving wild animals occurred within 30 kilometers (19 miles) of Taman Negara between 2019 and 2024. TRAFFIC data showed that the most-seized parts by volume were from sun bears (Helarctos malayanus), leopards (Panthera pardus) and pangolins (Manis javanica) — species classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List and banned for commercial trade.
“The findings show that wildlife-rich areas, whether they are within protected forests or outside it, are always at risk,” TRAFFIC communications manager Elizabeth John told Mongabay by email.
John cited the example of a seizure in November 2023 in the town of Panching, about 50 km (30 mi) outside the park, in which authorities recovered 397 sun bear claws, as well as leopard and pangolin parts, potentially from Taman Negara and nearby smaller protected areas.
She said incidents like these underscore the relentless threat to biodiversity and the urgent need for continued antitrafficking efforts in the region.
‘Poachers are persistent’
According to the TRAFFIC report, wildlife seizures over the past five years within Taman Negara and its 30-km radius have resulted in the arrest of 74 individuals. It credits the arrests primarily to the serious investigations and interagency collaboration led by Ops Bersepadu Khazanah, a joint enforcement task force established in 2019. The NGO Wildlife Conservation Society Malaysia also cites the formation of a National Tiger Task Force and a Wildlife Crime Bureau, as well as the deployment of more than 1,000 community rangers as significant wildlife conservation milestones.
“The hope is for these on-the-ground efforts to be sustained, expanded and improved where needed,” WCS Malaysia country director Mark Rayan Darmaraj, who was not involved in the TRAFFIC analysis, told Mongabay by email.
This is crucial, as there remains a striking gap between the number of seized wildlife parts and live animal rescues, despite enhanced enforcement efforts. While seizures within 30 km of Taman Negara resulted in the confiscation of 499 wildlife parts over the past five years, only 15 live animals were rescued during the same period, TRAFFIC’s nonexhaustive data showed.
In the Panching bust, parts from two dozen wildlife species were seized, ten of which were from species classified as totally protected in Malaysia, including the critically endangered Malayan tiger (Panthera tigris jacksoni), clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), serow (Capricornis sumatraensis), Asian golden cat (Catopuma temminckii) and Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).
John said this demonstrates “poachers are persistent” and “no wildlife-rich area, however well patrolled, is completely exempt from the clutches of poachers.”
Silent forest
Spanning 4,343 square kilometers (1,677 square miles) across the states of Pahang, Kelantan, and Terengganu, Taman Negara is Malaysia’s largest and most renowned national park. This natural wonder boasts an impressive biodiversity, with 3,000 plant species and a diverse array of animal species, including 150 mammal species, many of which are threatened and found nowhere else in the world.
The heavy poaching and trafficking of Taman Negara’s mammals, particularly threatened species such as pangolins, bears and leopards, could lead to population declines or even extinction if overharvesting continues. “This could leave us with silent forests,” John said.
The phenomenon of a silent forest, where the ecosystem appears intact, but is missing crucial wildlife, isn’t a distant threat for Taman Negara. A 2019 study warned the park could lose its wealth of biodiversity within decades if poaching, logging and other pressures aren’t addressed, especially in parts of Pahang already suffering from low mammal diversity.
Yet despite this risk, poaching appears to be ongoing in the Pahang section of the park, with enforcers most recently seizing tiger bones and arresting six suspects on June 25.
WCS Malaysia attributes one of the difficulties in fully eradicating poaching to the vast size of the Taman Negara Forest Complex, which is nearly four times the size of Hong Kong. Darmaraj said this likely encourages both local poachers and those from other Asian countries to try their luck within the reserve. “Catching poachers or perpetrators in the dense rainforest is like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said.
Cascading effect
The long-term impact of poaching on wildlife abundance and forest ecosystems is hard to quantify given the limited understanding of animal interactions, ecological functions and their responses to habitat disturbances and diseases, said Darmaraj, a wildlife biologist.
However, he noted that pangolins feed voraciously on ants and termites, which may be destructive toward trees if overabundant. Sun bears, meanwhile, are important seed dispersers, control pests and help in nutrient cycling in the forests.
“So the seizures involving these animals in and around Taman Negara or our tropical evergreen rainforests in general are alarming due to the critical role these species play in the ecosystem, as well as the sheer number of seized parts involved,” Darmaraj said.
Eliminating apex predators like tigers from the forest can have cascading effects on the entire wildlife community, Darmaraj said. This, he warned, can lead to a surge in their prey populations, such as wild pigs and deer, which can alter vegetation due to increased feeding intensity, and make wild pigs more prevalent around villages and plantations, where they are considered “notorious pests” and often shot.
The removal of another top predator, the leopard, could trigger a similar trophic cascade, leading to a surge in herbivores that can damage forest structure, particularly affecting the survival of tree saplings and hindering the renewal of forest tree species, said Ian Chew, a leopard researcher with the Malaysian Nature Society.
“The disappearance of such charismatic megafauna could perversely make wildlife conservation in the country less of a priority for international donors in future,” Chew told Mongabay by email.
Breaking the trade chain
TRAFFIC says poaching will persist as long as there’s demand and a trade chain, particularly involving China and Vietnam, where confiscated parts fetch high prices and are used as food, traditional medicine, and status symbols. The Pahang case, John said, offers authorities a key opportunity to trace the full trafficking chain from the forest to its destination, enhancing enforcement effectiveness.
Beyond investigating links between poachers and traders and reducing demand to cripple the trade chain, WCS Malaysia calls for the implementation of long-term strategies for behavioral change at the source.
Understanding what drives locals to poach can help develop deterrent measures, such as addressing their basic needs, involving them in protected area co-management, and enhancing patrols and intelligence with advanced technologies to make poaching more difficult and riskier. “Multiple approaches are needed if we were to tackle this problem more effectively over a longer term, ” Darmaraj said.
Banner image: A pair of sun bears (Helarctos malayanus) in a tree. TRAFFIC data showed that the most-seized parts by volume were from sun bears, leopards and pangolins. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
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Citations:
Ickes, K., & Thomas, S. C. (2003). Native, wild pigs (Sus scrofa) at Pasoh and their impacts on the plant community. In Pasoh (pp. 507-520). Tokyo: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-4-431-67008-7_35
Jambari, A., Sasidhran, S., Abdul Halim, H. R., Mohamed, K. A., Ashton-Butt, A., Lechner, A. M., & Azhar, B. (2019). Quantifying species richness and composition of elusive rainforest mammals in Taman Negara National Park, Peninsular Malaysia. Global Ecology and Conservation, 18, e00607. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00607
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