Police crack down on online trade in wild animals
Print Edition
POLICE in south China’s Guangdong Province have seized more than 10,000 wild animals and nearly 1,000 kilograms of products derived from wild animals in a crackdown launched in April.
An investigation into the illegal online trade in wild animals began in April after police in the capital Guangzhou received a report that rare wild animals were being sold via messaging app WeChat.
For the next three months, police monitored major social media platforms, including WeChat, QQ, Weibo and some live broadcast websites, said Li Wenjiang, deputy director of the provincial forest police bureau.
They found a total of 5,380 messages related to illegal animal trading during the crackdown.
In one case, police used WeChat messages to locate and arrest three suspects. They seized 146 wild animals including rhesus monkeys, gold pythons, and African spurred tortoises in a house in Guangzhou’s Zengcheng district.
Police also seized the remains of 120 state-protected animals in another house in the city of Huizhou.
Police in Shaoguan seized 74 cobras and a Tibetan macaque after they received a report of video showing suspects poaching the animals on a live broadcast platform.
In another case, police seized a vehicle, 32 cobras and more than 1,000 other live wild animals in a market in Guangzhou.
Chinese law on the protection of wild animals bans the hunting, sale, purchase and use of state-protected animals or derived products.
Police in Guangzhou said they will continue to take tough measures to combat the illegal poaching, trading, purchasing, transporting and storing of wild animals.
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