Singapore and Thailand customs seize over 40kg rhino horn

January 2014: Customs officers in Singapore and Thailand have both recorded significant rhino horn seizures within a few days of one another.

Customs in Singapore seized eight pieces of smuggled black rhinoceros horn, weighing almost 22kg, in the luggage of a man travelling from Changi Airport to Vietnam. He was tried and convicted, on 16 January, to 15 months in prison. 

Just a few days later in Bangkok, on 19th January, Royal Thai Customs seized nine rhino horns weighing 21.8 kg from a transit passenger who arrived from Nairobi, Kenya, en route to Ha Noi, Vietnam.

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Smuggled Cobras Seized By Thai Customs Officials

Thai customs officials have seized 600 deadly cobras after stopping a vehicle at a checkpoint in a central region of the country.

The reptiles came from Malaysia and were being shipped through Thailand for use in traditional medicine or for food in another country, according to customs officials.

They were apparently destined for Laos.

The cobras were packed into mesh bags inside around 100 plastic baskets and put inside a truck for the long slow journey up from Malaysia. Some of them died on the way.

Working on a tip-off, the authorities set up a specialist X-ray checkpoint in Pranburi, about 230km south of Bangkok, to seize the shipment of venomous animals.

The driver of the vehicle was arrested and the snakes were put into the care of Thailand's Department of National Parks and Wildlife and Plant Conservation.

"It's a lot (of snakes)," said the head of Thai customs, Benja Louichareon.

"The Bureau of Investigation and Suppression have been tracking this case for a year," she added.

Thailand is a major transit country for wildlife trafficking and this seizure follows that of 4,300 cobras in May. Tigers and pangolins are also among recent finds by police.

Officials estimate that the haul was worth around 500,000 baht (£10,500) to the smugglers.

The snakes that survived the ordeal will be released into the wild.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/smuggled-cobras-seized-thai-customs-officials-135436462.html

$26 million of ivory seized by Hong Kong customs

At least 600 elephants were killed for these tusks

October 2012. In a joint operation involving Hong Kong and Guangdong customs officials, 1,209 pieces of ivory tusks and 1.4 kilogrammes of ivory ornaments, weighing about 3,813 kilogrammes, were found inside two containers shipped from Tanzania and Kenya to Hong Kong. The total seizure is worth about $26.7 million.
This seizure comes just 2 months after Kenyan authorities seized two tons of ivory at Nairobi airport. The ivory was destined for Malaysia. African elephants are being slaughtered at a faster rate than at anytime since the 1980s when as many as 100,000 were killed every year. Certainly 10s of thousands are being killed, often in the most brutal ways, by gangs of well armed and organised poachers with modern weapons, communication equipment, and in at least 1 case, helicopters.

972 ivory tusks
Acting on information provided by Guangdong Customs, Hong Kong Customs monitored the two suspicious containers. On October 16, Customs officers located one container arriving from Tanzania which was declared as containing "plastic scrap". Upon examination, the officers found 972 pieces of raw ivory tusks, weighing about 1,927 kilogrammes, and 1.4 kilogrammes of ivory ornaments inside 91 bags of plastics scraps, with an estimated value of about $13.5 million.




Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/hong-kong-ivory.html

Thai customs seize nearly ½ tonne of ivory at Bangkok Airport

Ivory arrived on flight from Kenya
July 2012. The latest in an ever increasing, and hugely worrying, litany of huge ivory seizures has occurred at Bangkok Airport, where Thai Customs have found some half a tonne of ivory in packing cases that arrived by plane from Kenya. 

The current rate of elephant poaching in Africa is as high as it has ever been, and as a % of the population left if it by far the worst the world has ever known. Central Africa has been particularly hard hit, with elephant populations in Cameroon, CAR, DRC, Sudan and Chad amongst the countries that have been hardest hit. 

2011 saw a record number of large ivory seizures globally, reflecting the sharp rise in illegal ivory trade underway since 2007. Although official confirmation of the volume of ivory involved in some cases has not yet been registered, what is clear is the dramatic increase in the number of large-scale seizures, over 800 kg in weight, that tookplace in 2011-at least 13 of them.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/ivory-seizure-thailand.html

10,000 rare bird eggs seized in Finland

OSTERBOTTEN, Finland, June 9 (UPI) -- Finnish customs officials seized about 10,000 rare bird eggs that are possibly related to a string of thefts stretching across Scandinavia, officials say.

Officers seized the eggs, as well as 300 dead birds, some of which were stuffed and some frozen, from a man at his residence in central Finland, the Swedish news agency TT reported Saturday.

Most of the eggs seized were from endangered species and many were worth a lot of money to rare egg collectors.

Police said the eggs may be linked to a string of rare bird thefts in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/06/09/10000-rare-bird-eggs-seized-in-Finland/UPI-32291339268913/#ixzz1xOAy8Jc6