When the Wildlife Conservation Act was enacted in 2010, it was hailed as among the most progressive conservation laws around.
Mandatory fines, heftier penalties, increased jail terms, the inclusion of parts and derivatives as forbidden, as well as greatly limiting the types of wildlife that may be hunted, gave Malaysian wildlife law enforcers legislation with actual bite.
Prosecutors have been able to secure stiffer penalties that send the message, to varying degrees, that Malaysia does care for its wildlife.
Unfortunately, the illegal wildlife trade remains undeterred and continues to thrive at the expense of our rapidly shrinking wildlife diversity. But, that is the nature of crime. It is the duty of the law, therefore, to keep up with the times and remain relevant.
Fast-forward a decade-plus to the Wildlife Conservation (Amendment) Bill 2021, which was tabled in the Dewan Rakyat this month and passed by the House on Wednesday.
Penalties have been greatly revised, with fines and prison terms increased by fivefold in many instances. Maximum fines, which previously stood at RM500,000, are now RM1 million. Minimum fines have been increased. And, to give better direction to the courts, many sections in the act now specify that penalties apply for each wildlife taken/poached/traded, instead of a general (and usually lower) penalty.
This is significant because illegal wildlife is not a one-or-two animal business: poachers don't take only one animal and call it a day — they take tens, or hundreds at a time, so, a maximum fine of RM500,000 is actually very low risk for such a high-yield business. In fact, even a maximum RM1 million fine, if not coupled with a hefty jail term, does not even keep up with inflation.
Wildlife trafficking is a lucrative business because it deals with exotic collectables that are very limited edition — and getting more limited by the day. Malaysia is one of the 17 megadiverse countries in the world, and to the illegal wildlife trader, being able to come into our rainforests and pick off our wildlife (not to mention flora) at leisure is like a Sunday stroll with a supermarket trolley down the aisles of Malaysia's biodiversity.
As with any other law, the increasing of penalties is only part of the solution, since penalties only kick in once an offender has been caught, charged and convicted. So, getting to that point also requires even more governmental attention.
Wildlife conservation needs more support and budgeting to ensure that there are enough boots on the ground to detect and apprehend poachers — many of whom are armed with high-calibre weapons and have access to helicopters. And if caught, we need investigators, prosecutors and judges, who are alert to the severity of the crime and are able to see it in the context of the overall illegal trade in wildlife, and to seek for, and mete out penalties that are commensurate with the offence.
The illegal wildlife trade's greatest advantage is that it is not seen as being as severe as drug or people trafficking, and so it has yet to gain the social disapproval it takes for people to consider it a "crime-crime". Yet, it is just as lucrative, and it affects the same routes and corrupts the same channels as any other form of smuggling.
We only have one chance to save our wildlife. Once they're gone, they're gone.