GOOD news for wildlife conservationists in Sabah.
The amended Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997 makes a jail term of one to five years mandatory for anyone found guilty of breaching its provisions. Fines, too, have been increased from the maximum of RM5,000 to between RM50,000 and RM250,000. Those caught in possession of protected plants will also face new, more severe penalties.
That the Sabah State Assembly passed the bill unanimously suggests that the lawmakers are not taking wildlife conservation lightly. As for the effectiveness of the amendments, the ball is now in the court of those who enforce the law. For, as is true of every law, it is only as good as the enforcement.
Back in 2010 the Federal Government passed the Wildlife Conservation Act, which toughened the laws substantially, but, unlike the Sabah amendments, it did not make imprisonment mandatory. Fines, at then seemingly prohibitive amounts, from RM50,000 to RM100,000, were provided for. Here, too, Sabah has upped the ante. In this respect, the 2010 Act which applies to the peninsula and the Federal Territory of Labuan can be strengthened.
However, a 2014 study showed that what was considered by conservationists to be a tough law did little to stop the crimes. In fact, as the paper on the Application of the Wildlife Conservation 2010 (Act 716) showed, “offences committed under the Act were quite rampant”.
Citing prosecution in Selangor for years 2011 and 2012, what was clear was the ineffectiveness of penalties handed down; they were nowhere near what was legally possible to deter future and repeat offences.
Similar reservations can, therefore, be made for the Sabah amendments. Will enforcers have the will to carry out effective policing to prevent smuggling and illegal hunting, especially? If the Thai-Malaysia border is anything to go by, cross-border smuggling, including that of protected wildlife, is fairly rampant. What makes it such is the substandard enforcement caused by corruption, a fact established when the human trafficking camp and mass graves were discovered in the border area about a year ago. With such an established enforcement record, conservationists cannot, but be pessimistic about the prospects of the latest amendments effecting better wildlife protection for the state unless, of course, the northern peninsula experience is not typical.
If enforcement is the key to the law’s success, the focus must be on ensuring that the rule of law prevails regardless. When jail time is mandatory one makes the assumption that it is a deterrent, but the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking demonstrates how when crimes are especially profitable, deterrence doesn’t work. It is fair to say that wildlife trade is lucrative. In these circumstances, only tough enforcement can end the abuse of creatures rendered helpless by man’s cruelty. But, if the enforcers are themselves part of the problem, then they need to be whipped into shape by the body responsible, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission. For, in the final analysis, corruption is the wilful undermining of the rule of law by those entrusted to uphold the law.