Cambodian Wildlife Official Arrested In US for Trafficking Macaques for Medical Research
Eight people, including a Cambodian wildlife official, have been arrested by federal prosecutors for their alleged involvement in a multimillion-dollar smuggling ring to export endangered monkeys for use in medical research in the US.
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Vanny Bio Research Breeding facility in Cambodia. Images obtained by Species Unite
Eight people, including a Cambodian wildlife official, have been arrested by federal prosecutors for their alleged involvement in a multimillion-dollar smuggling ring to export endangered monkeys for use in medical research in the US.
One of the accused is the deputy director of Cambodia's Department of Wildlife and Biodiversity, Masphal Kry. He was arrested in New York while traveling to CITES, an annual conference dedicated to regulating the global wildlife trade.
Kry, the director-general of Cambodia’s Forestry Administration (MAFF), and six members of the Hong Kong-based biomedical firm Vanny Bio Research were allegedly involved in supplying wild long-tailed macaques to labs in Florida and Texas under the pretense they were captive-bred.
Wild long-tailed macaques are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). When the animals are imported into the US, special permits are required to ensure the trade is legal and does not endanger the survival of the species. Those involved are accused of illegally purchasing wild macaques when they did not have enough animals available in their breeding farms.
“The macaque is already recognized as an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,” US attorney for the southern district of Florida Juan Antonio Gonzalez said in a statement. “The practice of illegally taking them from their habitat to end up in a lab is something we need to stop. Greed should never come before responsible conservation.”
The founder and owner of Vanny Bio Research, James Man Sang Lau of Hong Kong, and the company’s general manager, Dickson Lau, conspired with black market dealers and the accused Cambodian wildlife officials to acquire macaques captured from national parks and protected areas. Since 2017, the group “laundered” as many as 3,000 primates through Vanny’s Cambodian breeding facilities to hide that the animals were taken from the wild, according to the indictment.
“The fact you have government officials involved surely must raise question marks as to what could be happening in other facilities in Cambodia,” said Sarah Kite of Action for Primates. “The irony and tragedy for the macaques is that the same person supposed to protect and conserve the species has been indicted for the very opposite – plundering the wild populations.”
The eight defendants were charged with one count of conspiracy and seven counts of smuggling each. They face up to five years for the conspiracy charge, and an additional 20 years for each of the seven smuggling charges.
Vanny Bio Research Breeding facility in Cambodia. Images obtained by Species Unite
Recently, the conservation status of long-tailed macaques was changed from vulnerable to “endangered” for the first time by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as their numbers rapidly plummeted. Wild populations are predicted to drop by another 50 percent over the forty years if the current threats are not addressed.
“Wild populations of long-tailed macaques, as well as the health and wellbeing of the American public, are put at risk when these animals are removed from their natural habitat and illegally sold in the United States and elsewhere,” said Edward Grace, the assistant director of US Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement.
The long-tailed macaque is the most commonly used monkey in laboratories and the demand for the species has only skyrocketed since the COVID-19 pandemic began. More than 600,000 of the primates were allegedly born or bred in captivity and exported primarily for biomedical and toxicology research between 2011 and 2020, according to the CITES database.
WAMOS Air, a little-known Spanish airline owned in part by Royal Caribbean, is one of the airlines that are yet to ban the transport of macaque monkeys across the world to laboratories. Please join Species Unite in adding pressure to WAMOS Air and Royal Caribbean by signing our urgent petition here.
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