Vietnam returns smuggled Orang Utans to Indonesia

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*http://www.saigontimes.com.vn/daily/detail.asp?muc=2 & Sobao=2739 & SoTT=3*

*Vietnam returns two smuggled orangutans to Indonesia*

 

 

 

Wildlife veterinarian Cheryl MacPherson (L) of Wildlife Friends

Foundation of Thailand and Edwin Wiek of Borneo Orangutan Survival

Foundation care of the two orangutans at HCMC's Tan Son Nhat International

Airport before the animals are sent back to Indonesia yesterday

 

By *THANH TUNG*

 

*

(SGT-HCMC) *Vietnam's forest protection authorities repatriated a pair of

smuggled Bornean orangutans to Indonesia yesterday, two weeks after they

confiscated the endangered apes from a hotel in Binh Duong Province.

 

 

Officials from the Forest Protection Department raided Thanh Canh Hotel in

Binh Duong's Thuan An District on July 11 and confiscated the two female

animals there, which had been smuggled into Vietnam from the Indonesian

province of Kalimantan.

 

 

HCMC-based conservation organization Wildlife At Risk (WAR) said in a

statement issued yesterday that the juvenile apes were kept as attractions

for tourists.

 

 

The hotel also owns many Asiatic black bears for the extraction of bile used

for traditional Chinese medicine and has a small zoo holding sun bears,

Asiatic jackals, tigers, clouded leopards, macaques, civets, eagles,

hornbills and even an Asian elephant, says the statement.

 

 

Orangutans are protected under the Convention on International Trade in

Endangered Species (CITES), which Vietnam signed in 1994.