Indonesia’s pre-social media laws are no match for animal traffickers
- In just one year, WWF Indonesia identified 2,500 adverts on Facebook and 2,207 ads on Instagram that were selling either animals or their body parts
- Offences against wildlife cost Indonesia, one of the world’s most biodiverse nations, almost US$1 billion a year
Indonesia is one of the world’s most biodiverse nations. It is thought that as many as 300,000 species, or almost one in five of the world’s animals, are to be found in this sprawling Southeast Asian nation.
It is home to 515 species of mammals and 1,539 species of birds, and almost half of all fish species live in its waters. Unfortunately, this biological wealth is not matched by efforts to preserve it.
After drugs and human trafficking, offences against wildlife are the third-most pressing problem facing law enforcers in Indonesia, with criminal cases in 2018 having a combined estimated value of 13 trillion rupiah (almost US$1 billion) per year.
And the problem appears to be multiplying. The Wildlife Crime Unit investigated 451 cases and 657 individuals in the 2015-2017 period, during which time the number of cases featuring protected species more than doubled, from 106 to 225 cases.
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Experts warn that poaching and the trade in wild animals – taken alongside deforestation and the deterioration of habitats – are pushing many of Indonesia’s native animals to the brink of extinction.
GROWING PROBLEM
Indonesia’s wealth of rare flora and fauna makes it a target for wildlife smugglers who are struggling to meet a growing demand. This demand is fed by people across the world who are interested in owning protected animals as pets or displaying their bodies, or body parts, as trophies in their homes.
Another set of people are interested in using bits of these animals’ bodies in traditional medicine practices, particularly in China. On the Asian black market, the demand for Pangolins is high because their scales are believed to be a cure for various diseases, while their meat is often traded for consumption. This is why pangolins are among the most protected of Indonesia’s animals.
The wildlife unit suspects that between 2015 and 2018 more than 3,000 pangolins were smuggled out of the country to be sold to a group of about 40 buyers. During that period the unit probed 23 cases involving pangolin smuggling, many of them linked to dealers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Laos.
Contributing to the rise of the problem are online and social media sites that specialise in the buying and selling of these animals. Between 2016 and 2017, the number of online cases of protected wildlife being traded online increased 39 per cent.
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Throughout 2017, WWF Indonesia identified 2,500 adverts on Facebook, 2,207 adverts on Instagram and 195 adverts on e-commerce sites that were selling either live animals or their body parts.
And in just one month at the beginning of 2019, Indonesia’s Criminal Investigation Directorate confiscated 205 living animals and 78 animal body parts from 12 suspects.
In March, the police confiscated 41 Komodo dragons from a wildlife trafficking syndicate in East Java. The dragons were to be sold on the black market for between 500 million rupiah (US$35,000) to 900 million rupiah each.
Amid such cases, the Ministry of Environment and Forests is playing catch-up. It plans this year to introduce surveillance and intelligence systems based on information technology, including cyber patrols and “Spartan”, its integrated Forest Security Vulnerability Monitoring System.
While welcome, such initiatives are not enough. Efforts to crack down on crimes against wildlife need to be increased immediately or Indonesia will find itself paying the costs.
COST OF INACTION
Return for a second to that figure of 13 trillion rupiah that the Ministry of Environment and Forestry estimates the country loses every year to the illegal wildlife trade. This figure does not include many hidden costs, such as the cash spent on rehabilitating seized animals.
In the case of the hundreds of orangutans seized from illegal smugglers each year, rehabilitation efforts can take up to five years and cost up to 500 million rupiah for just one orangutan. For the same money, the government could put hundreds of Indonesian children through their nine years of compulsory education.
The trade also threatens something that is not countable in terms of rupiah: the collapse of entire forest ecosystems, the consequences of which are beyond estimation.
WEAK LAW ENFORCEMENT
If all this paints a bleak picture of the future, it should be said that the Indonesian government need not be a helpless bystander. A solution is staring it in the face: tougher laws and tougher enforcement.
Under Indonesian law, criminal penalties for those who buy, sell and hunt protected plants and animals within or outside the country are restricted to a maximum of five years imprisonment and a fine of 100 million rupiah.
Activists say this is simply too lenient. What’s more, the law makes no real effort to differentiate between the severity of different crimes.
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Too often, perpetrators get token sentences, like one year in prison, and these fail to deter others.
This is because the relevant piece of legislation – article 40 of Law no. 5 of 1990 paragraph 2 – has been in force for almost 30 years.
That is an aeon when it comes to animal trafficking. Police themselves say many perpetrators are recidivists, drawn to repeat the crime because the potential gains still outweigh the potential costs.
Activists have long demanded revisions to the law but the government so far has turned a deaf ear. They say that Indonesia must rethink it’s approach to this outdated law, or face a future of forests without animals.
What’s more, they say, it must do so quickly – its biodiversity crown is beginning to slip.
