There is no escaping the fact that countries from which wild tigers have been wiped out or virtually wiped out in recent years – Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and China – are countries where the tiger has been valued solely for the sum of its body parts.
Despite the rapid proliferation of organised Vietnamese wildlife trafficking networks driving illegal wildlife trade globally, the response from the Government of Vietnam has been inadequate and disproportionate to the scale of wildlife trafficking implicating Vietnamese criminal groups.
A briefing highlighting serious violations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) by the Government of Vietnam, as evidenced in a formal submission from the Government of Cambodia
Failure to take any meaningful action against identified networks and individuals has led to international Vietnamese syndicates operating with impunity. Illegal ivory, rhino horn and pangolins are entering Vietnam at alarming rates, accelerating declines in populations of elephants, rhinos and pangolins
Illegal and unsustainable rosewood logging is the major threat to Thailand’s limited remaining forests, particularly in the north-east regions. Unprecedented demand for luxury ‘Hongmu’, or ‘redwood’, furniture in China is driving this logging
Corrupt Government officials and military personnel in Vietnam are complicit in smuggling huge quantities of illegal timber from Cambodia, pocketing millions of dollars in bribes from smugglers for their part in allowing hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of logs stolen from Cambodia’s National Parks