YOUR AD HERE — REACH DISCERNING READERS OF SERIOUS JOURNALISM
Rates upon inquiry. Clowns extra.
WORLD✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Vietnam seizes 1.2 tons of ivory, plus big cat bones, hidden in timber shipment
Filed 22h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk
THIS STORY IS SCORED
The Bandit
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Authorities at Quy Nhon Port in Vietnam intercepted a shipment of 165 crates declared as African sawn timber, discovering 1,193 kilograms of elephant ivory and 79.3 kilograms of big-cat bones hidden inside 12 hollowed-out crates. The shipment arrived in July from the Republic of Congo under the name of a local trading company, and scanning equipment revealed the smuggled goods packed in wax and sealed with wood to pass inspection.
Lab testing by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology confirmed the material came from elephants and big cats, and provincial police have opened criminal proceedings with several suspects detained. Conservationists note the seizure reflects both persistent demand for wildlife parts in Southeast Asia and a shift toward sourcing big-cat parts from Africa as local tiger and leopard populations dwindle.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
Twelve hollowed-out crates dressed up as ordinary lumber is the kind of trick a kid tries with a cereal box, except this one moved over a ton of dead elephants across an ocean. Somebody spent real money engineering that wax-and-wood disguise, which tells you the payoff on the other end is worth more than getting caught once in a while. Catching one shipment feels good right up until you remember this is apparently routine enough to have a decades-long pattern behind it.
