BANGKOK (AP) — Commercial fishing fleets have been playing a key role in trafficking parts of tigers poached in Malaysia, according to research released Wednesday that could help enforcement efforts to save the critically endangered cat. The fishing boats are part of a network of routes used by sophisticated teams of poachers to move parts of illegally killed Malayan Tigers and other poached animals to Vietnam, according to the study by conservation organizations Panthera and ZSL in conjunction with Malaysia’s Sunway University. Through interviews with more than four dozen people involved in the operations, including poachers and those who brokered sales of the illicit goods, researchers found that fishing boats were able to carry larger consignments, cheaper, and less likely to be checked by customs than land or air routes.
“To really crack a problem and insert the right intervention that’s going to have any impact you have to understand the thing inside out,” said Panthara’s Rob Pickles, the lead author of the , in a phone interview from Kuala Lumpur. “That’s what we hope that this study does — contribute to that depth of understanding of the problem to allow us to tailor the interventions.” From a population estimated at some 3,000 tigers in the middle of the 20th century, the latest estimates are that there are only about 150 of the cats left in Malaysia and they have already gone extinct in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam over the last 25 years.
In additio.