TROPHY HUNTERS, BUYERS DRIVE TIGERS TOWARD EXTINCTION

The accused, a middle-aged Chinese man dressed in a pale blue shirt and jeans, sat quietly on the bench in the defendant’s paddock, as attorneys questioned the witnesses.

Occasionally, he would turn around to frown at the dozen or so visitors in the KL sessions court room, mostly members of the media and wildlife conservation non-governmental organisations.

The defendant was in the courtroom due to a wall decoration at a luxury condominium he allegedly owned. One afternoon in August, 2022, officers from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks of Peninsular Malaysia (PERHILITAN) and the Royal Malaysia Police had found and confiscated a tiger pelt, encased in a glass frame, hanging on the living room wall — a trophy of a creature at the brink of extinction. 

On April 14, the first day of the trial, the tiger pelt, complete with head, was no longer in the glass case. Instead, it lay crumpled in a clear plastic container on a table towards the back, near the accused’s paddock. 

To the 49-year old defendant, the tiger’s head and skin were possibly just an exotic piece of decor. To conservationists, they were a sign of a global crisis.

In Malaysia, the act of “keep(ing) any part or derivative of a totally protected wildlife,” such as the tiger (panthera tigris), without a special permit is an offence under Section 68 (1) (b) of the Wildlife Conservation Act of 2010. If convicted, the defendant faces between RM100,000 and RM500,000 in fines, and not more than five years in prison.

The man had pleaded not guilty on the first hearing of the case on March 4, 2024.

How the tiger pelt came to be in this man’s condominium, located on Jalan Tun Razak, was not mentioned on the first day of trial. On that day, the court heard details of the raid, which took place on Aug 1, 2022. Four PERHILITAN officials and five police officers, pursuant to a complaint from a member of the public, entered the premises at about 12.45 pm, accompanied by the defendant.

Upon cross-examination by the defence, the court also heard that members of the raid, part of Ops Bersepadu Khazanah, had seen a Tik Tok video of the tiger pelt prior to the raid. The video was not presented that day. The next day, the court heard DNA evidence that the tiger pelt was from a tiger, and not a fake as suggested by the defence.

In the first two days of the trial, there was no suggestion that the defendant was a member of a poaching or smuggling ring. Nevertheless, if he is convicted of the offence of keeping the illicit trophy, he will legally be an integral part of the illegal wildlife trade, which Interpol considers one of the biggest and most profitable sectors.

DEMAND AS FUEL

The Malayan tiger (panthera tigris jacksoni), endemic to the Malay Peninsula, is a symbol of Malaysia, with two Malayan tigers flanking the shield in the country’s coat of arms. Unfortunately, it is at risk of vanishing altogether as it is now listed as Critically Endangered on the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, while the overall species is listed as endangered.

Despite international bans and increased enforcement at the international and national levels for the past two decades, tiger parts and other wildlife continue to move through shadowy supply chains – from poachers to middlemen to buyers. While attention often falls on traffickers and middlemen, not to mention stiffer sentences, conservation and legal experts told Bernama a driver of the illegal wildlife trade is demand — mostly from wealthy individuals who treat endangered species as status symbols or as exotic medicine.

“The main culprit is the person who demands it, you know. If there's no demand, there's no supply,” said Dr Haezreena Begum Abdul Hamid, criminologist and senior lecturer at the faculty of law at University of Malaya.

She said this also puts the buyers at a distance, to “absolve” themselves of the crime because they   were not the ones doing the killing.

In 2023, Interpol estimated the illegal wildlife trade to be worth US$20 billion. Conservation experts told Bernama one reason the trade has flourished is due to the ease of trafficking wildlife and parts of them compared to the penalties.

Fewer than 150 Malayan tigers remain in the wild, attributed to habitat loss, lack of prey, conflict with humans, and poaching. While some tiger parts are trafficked for traditional medicine or spiritual rituals, pelts and taxidermy mounts are often bought for display as tokens of power, wealth or influence.

“The trophy is given to the champion, right? So it’s the same thing, historically, for the hunters, when they hunt the tiger, they feel proud because they managed to kill the very dangerous animals. (But now,) we cannot do that because the tiger population is low,” said Prof (Rtd) Dr Ahmad Ismail, president of the Ecological Association of Malaysia.

IUCN reports more than 150,300 species are threatened.

THROWING THE BOOK

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), member countries including Malaysia have agreed to ban all trade of tigers or tiger derivatives.

Malaysia’s Wildlife Conservation Act 2010 lists tigers on the second schedule as ‘Totally Protected Wildlife.’ Possessing any part of a tiger, dead or alive, without a special permit is a serious offence. Not only that, selling, buying or possessing fake tiger parts is no shield from the law either.

Yet enforcement remains an uphill battle as the market has evolved, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC). While previously, illegal wildlife trade used to be by small-time local poachers and sellers, now large  and powerful international organised crime syndicates have mostly taken over.

Investigations by various international law enforcement agencies, international conservation groups and news media show that tiger parts are trafficked through increasingly sophisticated routes. 

Malaysia is a transit and source hot spot for the illicit trade. As recently as April 20, 2025, PERHILITAN officers, in collaboration with Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), auxiliary police detained and arrested a man from India who was attempting to smuggle a black-handed gibbon (hylobates agilis) and six red-eared slider terrapins (trachemys scripta elegans).

With the advent of social media, more and more of the illegal wildlife trade has moved online, which can complicate matters, as there were no laws specifically against online trading of wildlife and its parts. In 2022, Malaysia plugged this loophole in the Wildlife Conservation Act by adding section 88 (b), which criminalises online promotion, sale or purchase of wildlife and its parts without permit. However, as of April 23, 2025, the law has not taken effect, according to legal sources.

With online platforms, sellers and buyers no longer need to meet to transfer their illicit goods.

A 2022 report by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, found hundreds of listings for  endangered animal parts across social platforms in Southeast Asia, including tiger skins, teeth, and claws, with seizures of wildlife and its parts occurring in 2,205 incidents in the 13 Tiger Range Countries, which includes Malaysia and India.

PERHILITAN Director-General Datuk Abdul Kadir Abu Hashim was quoted in a 2023 news report as saying that illegal wildlife trade on social media was on the rise, with Tik Tok becoming more popular. 

“The traders would suddenly remove their accounts from the platforms but reappear after two to three months. Then they would change their account names again and again to evade the authorities,” he reportedly said.

ALL HANDS ON DECK

However, experts say social media can also help stop the illegal trade, by bringing such activities to the attention of authorities.

In one instance, a video on Tik Tok showing people plucking the whiskers of a dead tiger, which had been killed in a traffic collision with a truck in Perak in November 2023, outraged netizens and made it go viral, which caught the attention of PERHILITAN officers.

Ahmad, who is also a former president of Malaysia Nature Society, told Bernama that social media users should be more aware of wildlife issues, adding that more research on tiger populations were needed.

“If the public are concerned when they see (videos like) this, they can directly inform the PERHILITAN. This is one way. That’s why education is very important. Sometimes people don’t know (that they should report),” he said. 

Laws on the books against wildlife offences are already pretty harsh, but whether they stick is a whole different matter. Judges have been handing down stiffer penalties to wildlife criminals in recent years but several still get their sentences significantly reduced upon appeal. 

For instance, in August 2023, the Temerloh High Court reduced 32-year old Burhanuddin Kamil Adenan’s sentence to one year in a jail for each of the three charges to be served concurrently (which means he only serves one year in jail) and his fine to RM350,000. If not paid, he would get six months of jail for each charge.

The Temerloh Sessions Court previously sentenced him to a total 10 years in jail and RM1 million for illegally possessing a carcass of a juvenile tiger and two whole tiger skins in December 2022.

Haezreena told Bernama that she did not agree with holding wildlife crimes to a lower standard than crimes involving human victims, saying people’s mindset needs to change towards protecting animals.

“People still look at animals as our right to dominate as if we are the only occupants on earth but we are sharing the space with them. People still don’t understand that they are voiceless creatures, you know, that they are vulnerable,” she said, adding that awareness was improving with the next generation.

After two days, the trial of the man with the tiger pelt has been adjourned to a later date. The defendant is released on bail, free for now.

There is no such easy reprieve for the tiger, however, as time is still running out for them. Without involving everyone, including the public, in stopping the illegal wildlife trade, trophies like the tiger pelt may be the only relic left over to remind us that these majestic animals once roamed the jungles of Malaysia.

“We must save our tigers. Otherwise, (we lose) our maruah (dignity). We can’t be putting the tiger as our symbol (when) we don't have the tiger," said Ahmad.