KOTA KINABALU: Sabah has set up a wildlife crime interagency working group to tackle online trafficking and illegal trade of wildlife.
Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) director Augustine Tuuga said the illegal trade of wildlife species is often carried out virtually or via social media platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram.
This, he said, presents a huge challenge to enforcement personnel, especially in collecting digital evidence.
"Cases of departmental arrests involving online sales are still few and often, arrests are made after ensuring the protected wildlife is under the possession of the suspect.
"Furthermore, under existing laws, it is not an offence for a person to display animals that are protected or fully-protected on social media," he said.
Augustine was speaking at a two-day course titled 'Monitoring and Detecting Illegal Wildlife Trade Online', jointly organised by the SWD, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC).
The training provided an opportunity for the working group to improve their knowledge on theoretical and practical aspects related to information gathering using open-source techniques.
Dr Milena Salgado Lynn, who is the United States Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) coordinator, said they are grateful to MCMC for the close cooperation with SWD in providing the training courses which saw the setting up of the interagency working group.
She said feedback from participants have been very positive, and although it was a new topic for many, it has nevertheless boosted their confidence in doing online investigations.
"It was very encouraging when INL offered to fund the continuation of the project for two more years, after the original end date of Oct 2021.
"We look forward to the next two years and seeing the impact it can do to curb these illegal activities," she said.
INL has channeled almost RM8 million towards the enforcement and forensic programme, which has been running since October 2019.