ILLEGAL WILDLIFE TRADE IN MALAYSIA: CURRENT CHALLENGES AND INTERVENTIONS
Malaysia remains a critical source, transit and demand country for species trafficked across Asia and beyond. To address this, TRAFFIC employs a multi-pronged trade monitoring approach to build an evidence base that informs enforcement and policy. Through systematic seizure analysis, court monitoring, and online trade surveys, TRAFFIC identifies emerging trends, trafficking routes, and factors that facilitate trafficking.
Recent findings highlight several pressing issues. Cross-border wildlife smuggling by air to India reflects sophisticated transnational networks. A surge in gibbon trafficking underscores the international demand for primates as pets. Meanwhile, shark and ray products continue to be openly traded online, and tiger parts persist in illicit markets. Together, these cases illustrate the scale and diversity of wildlife crime in Malaysia today.
These data-driven insights help shape interventions and strengthen national responses. TRAFFIC’s interventions target both supply and demand dimensions. The team delivers training and capacity building for the transport sector, including airlines and postal and courier services, to detect and disrupt illegal shipments. In collaboration with government agencies and other partners, TRAFFIC supports law enforcement officers and prosecutors to strengthen investigations and secure convictions. Complementing enforcement, behaviour change initiatives within the Traditional Chinese Medicine community aim to reduce demand for products derived from threatened species. Multi-stakeholder partnerships bridge the private and public sectors, promoting shared responsibility in curbing illegal trade.
SERENE CHNG
TRAFFIC International Southeast Asia
Serene Chng is a Programme Manager at TRAFFIC International – Southeast Asia and has been working for TRAFFIC since 2013, managing and implementing projects across the region collecting evidence of wildlife trade to guide interventions and influence stakeholders. She has authored a range of technical reports and scientific papers uncovering the scale and depth of the illegal and unsustainable trade in multiple taxa; her work on the caged bird trade across Southeast Asia is probably the most prominent part of her portfolio. Serene is a Co-coordinator of the IUCN SSC Asian Songbird Trade Specialist Group, a National Geographic Explorer and holds an MPhil in Conservation Leadership from the University of Cambridge and a BSc (Hons) Biology from the University of Bristol.