Facebook groups: Malaysia's new wildlife trade marketplace

The emergence of social media has created a platform for illegal wildlife trade in Peninsular Malaysia in the form of a virtual marketplace.

A report released by wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC, found that in just half an hour of daily monitoring over five months, more than 300 wild and live animals were put up for sale as pets on Facebook.

According to Kanitha Krishnasamy, TRAFFIC Southeast Asia Programme Manager, from the 14 Facebook groups monitored from November 2014 to Mac 2015, a total of 80 species were traded.

Most of the species observed in trade are considered "Totally Protected" by the Wildlife Conservation Act 2010 in Peninsular Malaysia, meaning domestic trade is prohibited.

"Among the popular species traded that are also threatened, is the Slow Loris. They are quite popularly traded in a few South East Asian countries. We found that they were also a hit among those 14 Facebook groups. There were some who wanted to buy a baby bear."

"There were also requests for Ploughshare Tortoise dan Radiated Tortoise. Both of these species can only be found in Madagascar. These means that export of wildlife is also happening. Question is, where do the sellers get their stock?" said Kanitha, who is also the co-author of the report 'Trading Faces: A Rapid Assessment on the use of Facebook to Trade Wildlife in Peninsular Malaysia' that was published online on Thursday.

The majority of the groups investigated were "Closed", meaning only members of that group can view activity on its page.

At the time of monitoring, there were 67,532 active members in these 14 groups, one of which was particularly substantial, with over 21,000 members.

Astro AWANI also did a quick search on Facebook and found in one of the public groups were also actively use as a platform to trade these endangered species.

What was even more shocking was that most of the animals were not only protected but juvenile as well.

"This is very worrying when the wildlife is still a baby, this means they were taken from their mothers at a very young age. Therefore the possibility for them to survive without their mother's care is hard and the risks of them dying is very high too," said Kanitha.

In total, 236 individual posts of live wild animals being offered for sale were captured and documented from the 14 Facebook groups during the assessment period (an average of 30 minutes a day), with an average of 47 posts per month.

Significantly, this assessment reveals an unprecedented level of trade in 18 native mammal species, driven primarily by the demand for pets, collectors' items and breeding stock.

This includes the Sun Bear Helarctos malayanus, Sunda Slow Loris Nycticebus coucang, White-handed Gibbon Hylobates lar and Smooth Otter Lutrogale perspicillata and involved a minimum of 83 and a maximum of 101 animals.

Trade in these animals is strictly prohibited in Peninsular Malaysia.