"Taiping Four" to go to South Africa?

August 2003

The Government of Malaysia has decided to confiscate four gorillas ("the Taiping Four") obtained by Taiping Zoo, Malaysia, in January 2002.

However, rather than sending the gorillas to a sanctuary in a gorilla habitat country, the Malaysian Government announced that it would send them to Pretoria Zoo in South Africa, a nation thathas no wild gorillas and that maintains only three gorillas in zoos.

Two of these gorillas are housed at Johannesburg Zoo. One lives alone at Pretoria Zoo. Three gorillas formerly living at Pretoria died in their 20s.

The International Primate Protection League believes that the Taiping Zoo gorillas should be sent to a rescue center in Cameroon (the probable country of origin of the "Taiping Four"), preferably Limbe Wildlife Centre. Limbe currently provides excellent care to a group of gorillas, all rescued from trade.

Limbe has an active program to educate the Cameroonian public to care for the nation's forests and wildlife heritage. Additional organizations that would prefer to see the gorillas sent to a sanctuary include the Pan African Sanctuary Association, the Born Free Foundation, and the Jane Goodall Institute.

IPPL initiates investigation

In March 2002, the International Primate Protection League was informed that four young gorillas had reached Taiping Zoo in the state of Perak, Malaysia, under suspicious circumstances. We were provided with a photo of two dealers allegedly involved and a business card from an employee of the animal dealing firm (Norizan Binti Abdulrahman, Managing Director of NigerCom Solutions) that reportedly supplied the animals.

International commercial trade in gorillas is banned. All ape species, including gorillas, are listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), of which Malaysia is a member state. Nonetheless, there is considerable demand for gorillas which, like pandas, are popular exhibit animals.

IPPL immediately began to look into the suspicious affair. An IPPL investigator was sent to Malaysia and, during a visit to Taiping Zoo, confirmed the presence of four young gorillas who were being kept off-exhibit.

Our investigator reported being told by Kevin Lazarus, Director of Taiping Zoo, that the gorillas had been procured from a Nigerian zoo. Another person associated with the zoo reported that the gorillas had been captured in Cameroon and delivered to the Nigerian Zoo, which arranged their transport to Malaysia.

The Malaysian zoo director stated that the gorillas were not yet on display because "the NGO" (meaning IPPL!) was making such a fuss over the shipment! Mr. Lazarus refused to provide copies of the import/export documents, increasing IPPL's suspicions and leading us to obtain them from other sources.

At this point IPPL contacted Malaysian wildlife authorities, who immediately canceled an import permit under which the Taiping Zoo could import two more young gorillas.

In addition IPPL initiated a letter-writing/postcard campaign to Malaysian and Nigerian authorities requesting that the shipment be investigated. Many members responded, and we extend our thanks to all who did!

One of the "Taiping Four"

IPPL follows the "paper trail"

Learning that the animals had been shipped from Nigeria enabled us to contact our friends in Nigeria and obtain many relevant documents. The Associated Press, Agence France Presse, the BBC, and several Nigerian newspapers ran many articles about the shipment and obtained more evidence and documents.

An IPPL colleague in Nigeria was especially concerned and worked to gather further information. He obtained many documents, including:

• a South African Airways air waybill for four gorillas to be shipped from Lagos, Nigeria, to Penang, Malaysia, via Johannesburg, South Africa, and Bangkok, Thailand. South African Airways normally has a policy of not shipping primates.
• a South African veterinary import/ re-export permit for five lowland gorillas to be shipped from Nigeria via Johannesburg to Malaysia. Apparently this did not attract any official concern despite widespread knowledge of the endangered status of the gorilla.
• a Nigerian CITES permit issued to Ibadan Zoo for export of 5 "captive-bred" gorillas. One of the gorillas was not shipped and may have died.

IPPL provided these documents to the Government of Malaysia, the world press, and the CITES Secretariat. In fact, the Switzerland-based CITES Secretariat would never have known that the shipment had taken place if IPPL had not provided it with information!

Glenn McKenzie of the Associated Press wrote an excellent story from his base in Nigeria. He went to Ibadan to investigate and found only one gorilla — an elderly female living by herself. Zoo employees informed McKenzie that many young gorillas had passed through the zoo — and that many of those awaiting shipment had died there. One keeper stated that the baby gorillas who reached Ibadan Zoo came from Cameroon.

Gorillas on CITES agenda

Dr. Imeh Okopido, Nigeria's then- Minister of State for the Environment, attended the 12th Conference of the Parties to CITES, which was held in Santiago, Chile, in November 2002.

At a press conference held during the conference, Okopido denounced the gorilla shipment to the world's press. Malaysian officials made a feeble defense, stating that they were "duped" by the participants in the deal (surely it is their job to be vigilant!)

On 13 November 2002, Dr. Okopido and Mr. Denis Koulagna Koutou, head of the Cameroonian delegation, co-signed a letter to Malaysia's Minister of the Environment calling for the gorillas to be sent to an African sanctuary.

In October 2002, Dato' Seri Law Hieng Ding, the Malaysian Minister of the Environment, had made an initial announcement that the gorillas would be confiscated and sent to "a certified breeding facility to be recommended by the CITES secretariat." The Minister pled naivete and said, "We were misled into believing that the transaction was above board."

Malaysia decides to send gorillas to South Africa

Following the Minister's statement that the gorillas would be confiscated, several months passed with no action. Then, in July 2003, Minister Law held a press conference at which he stated that he now believed that Taiping Zoo knew that the four baby gorillas it had purchased were "illegally sourced"—and that "the export permit issued by Nigerian authorities had been forged."

Law continued,
The permit was signed by me as Minister. It was a false declaration which means I have also been cheated. So we're taking this seriously to find out who were the cheats...! have asked Taiping Zoo to provide a full report on its transaction with Nigeria.

Law also announced that the Malaysian Cabinet had agreed to send the baby gorillas to "the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa in Pretoria under a bilateral technical co-operation agreement." Minister Law provided no details of the agreement and said that the decision had been approved by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) and the CITES Secretariat.

Zoo or Sanctuary?

Minister Okopido has informed IPPL that he has received no reply to the letter he and Mr. Koulagna Koutou co-signed in November 2002, in which they requested that the four gorillas be sent to a sanctuary in Cameroon.

Minister Law claimed that "the Pretoria Zoo has the best means to care for the gorillas, which may not be able to survive if returned to the wild."

Pretoria Zoo currently owns one male gorilla. According to the International Gorilla Studbook, three other gorillas owned by Pretoria died in their 20s, the last one in 1998. Two infants born at the zoo sadly survived less than a month.

"Sanctuary would offer better home" —Jane Goodall

Many organizations have called for the gorillas to be sent to Limbe Wildlife Centre, a sanctuary in Cameroon that cares for a healthy group of confiscated gorillas and has an experienced African care staff assisted by international volunteers.

Dame Jane Goodall, whose institute operates several chimpanzee sanctuaries in Africa, commented:
Sending the four gorillas presently confiscated in Malaysia to a sanctuary would discourage further commercial trade in this highly endangered species. In addition, they would play an important role in teaching young Africans about the importance of wildlife protection, thus discouraging further illegal hunting. I have deep sympathy for the four young gorillas themselves. Let us hope they can speedily be returned to the country from which they were smuggled. It is even possible that, in the future, they can be returned to the forests which are their birthright.

Doug Cress, Director of the Pan African Sanctuary Association, which has 20 sanctuaries as members, commented:
This is an opportunity to send a clear message to poachers, traders, dealers, zoos, and all those involved in the black market animal trade: Traffic in endangered animals, and nobody profits. Instead the Pretoria Zoo will now receive the gorillas, even though South Africa itself—perhaps unwittingly—was part of the smuggling operation. At Limbe, the gorillas could one day be released to the wild, back in the range country where they belong. But at the Pretoria Zoo, not only are they destined to live in captivity forever, they are also thousands of kilometers from their homelands.

Unfortunately, input from other quarters appears to have prevailed. It looks like the four gorillas will retrace part of their original trip to Malaysia and again reach Johannesburg Airport.

HOW YOU CAN HELP- LETTERS NEEDED Please contact Malaysian Minister Law Hieng Ding and courteously express your approval of the confiscation of the gorillas, along with an expression of concern over his decision to send the four gorillas to a zoo in a country that is not a gorilla habitat country. Please inform the Minister that the Director of Ibadan Zoo has claimed in testimony before Nigerian's Commission of Enquiry into Wildlife Crime that four Malaysian nationals visited Ibadan repeatedly to arrange the gorilla deal. Obviously, these people had to know that the deal they were planning was illegal and did not involve captive-born gorillas. Request that these four Malaysians, and all involved in the gorilla deal, including the director of Taiping Zoo, be investigated and prosecuted if guilty of wrongdoing. Postage from the US to Malaysia costs 80 cents per ounce. Yang Berhormat Dato' Sen Law Hieng Ding (start "Dear Sir") Minister of Science, Technology and Environment Aras 1 - 7, Blok C5, Parcel C, Pusat Pentadbiran Persekutuan 620502 Putrajaya, Malaysia His Excellency the Ambassador of Malaysia 2401 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington DC 20038, USA Fax:202-483-7661 The High Commissioner for Malaysia 45 Belgrave Square London SW1X 8QT, United Kingdom Fax: 020-7235-5161