Impunity for Cambodia’s exotic pet owners as trade outpaces legislation

PURSAT, Cambodia — On the outskirts of the western Cambodian city of Pursat, some 180 kilometers, or 110 miles, north of Phnom Penh, tourists and travelers stream out of minivans parked in the forecourt of a PTT gas station. The Cambodian subsidiary of Thailand’s state-owned oil and gas conglomerate, PTT stands out as one of the country’s more modern gas station chains, sporting retail outlets popular in Thailand such as Café Amazon and 7-Eleven.

But the PTT in Pursat’s Prey Nhy commune boasts a number of unique Thai imports that draw more attention than the markedly clean toilets.

When reporters visited the PTT gas station in mid-February 2024, a blue and yellow macaw (Ara ararauna) and what experts have suggested could be a salmon-crested cockatoo (Cacatua moluccensis) were seen chained to a metal frame surrounding a tree in the center of the forecourt. Curious tourists leaned in to pet the birds.

Tucked away, around the corner and behind a noodle shop inside the PTT forecourt, sat a series of cages filled with animals and a large printed banner that read “Beware of animal bites. We are not responsible.”

Here, reporters found nonnative species including two more likely salmon-crested cockatoos, two common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), two Indian peafowls (Pavo cristatus), a golden pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus), three endangered sun parakeets (Aratinga solstitialis), and one as-yet-unidentified green bird that has been suggested to be a green-cheeked parakeet (Pyrrhura molinae).

Meanwhile native species identified at the PTT gas station included a juvenile pig-tailed macaque (Macaca leonina), two Malayan porcupines (Hystrix brachyura) — one adult, one juvenile — and a pileated gibbon (Hylobates pileatus), an endangered species.

Staff at the PTT gas station were quick to identify the owner of the animals, one Kong Sangva Pich. Upon learning that reporters wanted to speak with him about his wildlife collection, Pich, a police officer, arrived in full uniform within 15 minutes.

“Some are rare species from Cambodia, but most are from Thailand,” said Pich, who added that he had been running the menagerie for four years. “Others are from breeding programs, like the rare species in Cambodia — the gibbons. I found them for sale online. Some are expensive, some are cheap. The parrot over there, that is from my boss — he manages all of this, Teng Sokeat, he’s the real owner, I manage it for him.”

No permit, no problem

Pich described the situation as a “shelter or foster home” for the animals, although he stated outright that neither he nor Sokeat, the alleged owner, had any intention of releasing the animals either back into the wild or into formal rehabilitation facilities like the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center.

Mongabay was unable to reach Sokeat for comment, although he’s listed as co-director in the Ministry of Commerce’s records for a company called So Keat that’s registered in Prey Nhy commune for the wholesale of gasoline and diesel. Calls to the phone number listed for Sokeat repeatedly went unanswered.

According to Pich, the animals are delivered from Thailand by taxi, arriving in plastic cages, although Pich added that he was instructed by his boss never to collect the animals himself.

“We don’t know how they get them through the border checkpoint,” he said. “I don’t know about the legality, it will depend on the online sellers that we buy from. We don’t even know if they’re real people because they don’t have a physical shop or a tangible way to meet.”

When asked whether he possessed any documentation for the animals, including permits required for the cross-border trade of some species under the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES), Pich said he didn’t know what CITES was and that, as of mid-February, he didn’t have any permits from Cambodian authorities.

He presented an unsigned document that he said the Forestry Administration asked him to fill out two months prior, claiming it would allow him to keep the animals once he submitted it.

“I’m not aware of CITES, but some species, once they’ve been bred in facilities, they’re no longer considered wild animals and we possess some of those here,” Pich said, claiming it wasn’t technically legal, but that he had permission to “foster these animals.”

The Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team (WRRT), which consists of technical advisers from the NGO Wildlife Alliance, judicial police officers from both the forestry and the fisheries administrations, as well as military police, previously paid Pich a visit in March 2022.

Working in conjunction with the Pursat provincial cantonment of the Forestry Administration, they confiscated three pileated gibbons and relocated them to Phnom Tamao. The team could do so because pileated gibbons are native to Cambodia and listed as rare under the 2002 Forestry Law.

However, the law only applies to species native to Cambodia and categorizes wildlife species into endangered, rare or common based on 2007 population estimates.

Given that many of the animals on display at the PTT gas station aren’t native to either Cambodia or Thailand, the WRRT said the animals were likely imported illegally.

CITES-regulated species, specifically those listed under Appendix II, can’t legally be imported without export permits from the country of origin. In Cambodia, wildlife imports fall under customs authorities, who are responsible for checking permits and applying penalties in case of irregularities, the WRRT told Mongabay. But it added that “Borders are porous and wildlife can be smuggled into the country.”

“When it comes to ownership of nonnative species, there is no clear regulation with the current laws. This is a problem that happened in the neighboring countries around a decade ago, and those countries modified their laws to account for nonnative species,” the WRRT said.

Protected from on high

“Ordinary people cannot keep animals like this, it’s against the law, but then [former prime minister] Hun Sen intervened to return someone’s peacocks after they were seized,” Pich said.

On Feb. 16, 2023, a Forestry Administration team acting in conjunction with Wildlife Alliance seized six peacocks that were being raised illegally for sale online in Kampong Chhnang province. But just 12 days later, then-prime minister Hun Sen intervened personally, demanding Cambodia’s wildlife laws be amended.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony on March 1, 2023, Hun Sen was then quoted by Thai newspaper The Nation as saying, “If they [the peacock traders] are breaking the law, then my very own family would be the first to be convicted. I was unaware that he was breaching the law because that is not my area of expertise. If indeed it was illegal, then we must amend the law at once. If people are to be prosecuted, I will be the first — I have personally raised more peacocks than were seized in Kampong Chhnang.”

According to The Nation’s reporting at the time, Hun Sen said he would be convicted alongside his children and nephew.

“I would be convicted, and then my son Hun [Manith] would follow,” Hun Sen was quoted as saying. “The third person in court would be my nephew Hun To. I don’t know how many species To has raised, but Phnom Penh residents are used to seeing the beautiful hornbills that he releases to fly all over the city. The fourth to be convicted would be my youngest daughter Hun Mali. Her houses are rich in animals.”

This was not the first time that Hun Sen had personally waded into a conflict over the possession of wildlife.

In June 2021, during the peak of Cambodia’s COVID-19 outbreak, a Chinese national’s pet lion escaped from a luxury villa in downtown Phnom Penh and was seen roaming the streets of the capital.

The sight of the 18-month-old lion caused consternation throughout the city until authorities seized the animal and relocated it to the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center. But on July 4, 2021, Hun Sen ordered the lion be returned to its owner, who in turn promised to build a fence to prevent future escapes.

An uncertain situation at the PTT gas station

Following these interventions, it has become increasingly challenging for law enforcement and conservationists to act in potential trafficking cases pertaining to animals being kept as pets.

“As you knew the other [year] in the case of a person who raised peacocks in Kampong Chhnang, we followed the law, then we had to return those peacocks to the owner for him to raise and look after,” said Bun Ly, head of the Forestry Administration’s cantonment in Pursat province. “Since then, we have to follow this format.”

Ly told Mongabay that he does not inspect the PTT gas station in Pursat where Pich is holding animals, but the joins on visits made by his colleagues which only happened when instructed by the Forestry Administration’s head office in Phnom Penh.

Pich also confirmed that forestry authorities had visited and advised him to give the pileated gibbon some wooden bars to play with, the juvenile pig-tailed macaque a hammock to rest on, and to clean all of the animals’ cages daily — a task he has since delegated to gas station janitors.

Ly denied that Pich had been given permission to foster the animals, but said the Forestry Administration viewed them as pets and advised him to apply for a permit to keep them.

“I advised him to submit it to the wildlife department, but we don’t know if he will be approved,” he said, deferring other questions to the Forestry Administration in Phnom Penh.

Khim Finan, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which oversees the Forestry Administration, thanked Mongabay for bringing this case to their attention, but declined to answer specific questions on the legality of Pich’s wildlife collection.

“To ensure the integrity of the investigation, we request that you refrain from drawing unnecessary public conclusions on this case until its completion,” Finan told Mongabay via messaging app Telegram. “We appreciate your understanding and cooperation in this matter.”

The WRRT said it had recently paid a visit to the PTT gas station in Pursat, inspecting the animals on Jan. 3, 2024, in order to make a report to the Forestry Administration, but that no action was taken by forestry authorities.

Cambodian law in a state of transition

Cambodia’s legislation on the ownership and trade of animals is undergoing a transformation following the passage of the Environmental and Natural Resources Code on June 29, 2023. But no English translation of the code’s 865 articles has yet been created, making it difficult for outside conservationists to parse how the law will change.

However, several key changes are expected based on informal translations of the new code.

While the current law governing the ownership of pets fails to restrict the trade of nonnative species by simply ignoring them, the new code will be supplemented by ministerial regulations (praka) that will list what is legal to own as a pet sometime later in 2024. This is understood by conservationists to be drawn more from IUCN Red List data and is expected to render everything not listed in the praka illegal to own or trade.

Similarly, there are currently no punishments for CITES violations enforceable through the Cambodian subdecree that implements CITES restrictions. The subdecree instead refers to the 2002 Forestry Law for punishments — meaning nonnative species are, again, not covered.

The new code also seems to allow for subnational authorities to issue permits for people to trade in wildlife, a role that has previously only been filled by the ministry at the national level. This could potentially open up a range of risks, notably that of permits being issued to poachers, wildlife traffickers or through corrupt means — which could be more difficult to prevent at the subnational level. Again, the ministry didn’t respond to Mongabay’s specific questions on this matter.

Until these laws come into force — and Finan of the ministry didn’t say when they were expected to — conservationists, and Pich at the PTT gas station, remain in limbo.

“If there is insufficient CITES enforcement within Cambodia, it could create opportunities for the capture, import and sale of desirable wild non-native species globally,” said Ollie Roberts, a technical specialist on terrestrial conservation at the Cambodian office of conservation NGO Fauna & Flora.

“If there is little enforcement around the keeping of native Cambodian wildlife, it provides an outlet with limited risks, which benefits consumers more than poachers, and can generate further demand in-country,” he added, noting that the pet trade has been far less of a driver of poaching in Cambodia than the demand for meat or medicine and the loss of habitat to ongoing logging operations.

The new environmental code’s potential to legalize aspects of the wildlife trade poses a risk, Roberts told Mongabay by email, of giving cover to laundering poached and wild-caught animals as captive-bred ones.

“In the cases of these non-native ‘exotic’ wildlife being imported without CITES permits, they could have been captive bred for the pet trade, or they could have been caught directly from the wild, and for most species there is no way of knowing without implementation of monitoring systems and enforcement of permitting mechanisms,” Roberts said.

‘Keep them where they belong – the wild’

Certainly at Pich’s operation, there is limited monitoring or enforcement — if any laws apply during this transition period.

But throughout Mongabay’s interview with the self-described “animal lover” and police officer, an older man who accompanied Pich sat silently observing. Reporters have since identified this man as Taing Bunleang, an employee of the tycoon Mong Reththy.

Pich told Mongabay that Sokeat, the purported owner of the wildlife, had previously helped supply Reththy’s zoo with pileated gibbons from the PTT gas station. The zoo in question is billed as part of an ecotourism resort in Kampong Speu province, where Bunleang can be seen in photos with the resort’s management team.

When contacted by Mongabay, Leang Thy, manager of the zoo at the tycoon’s eco-resort for the past three years, said that Bunleang works for Reththy in Phnom Penh and that at least two gibbons were sent to the zoo from the PTT gas station in Pursat; one of the gibbons later died due to illness.

Bunleang could not be reached for comment.

“Wildlife trafficking that caters to the expanding exotic pet market is a grave threat to wildlife populations and ecosystems,” said Alistair Mould, country director of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Cambodia. “It also carries significant public health risks.”

Infectious diseases that can be transmitted by wildlife, like MERS, SARS and avian influenza, all pose a threat to humans, our food sources, economies and the biodiversity that underpins our planet’s interconnected ecosystem, Mould said.

“There is an urgent need to protect rare and exotic animals better and keep them where they belong — in the wild,” he said.

Banner image: A juvenile northern pig-tailed macaque pants in the morning heat while caged at a gas station in Cambodia. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.