PUBLISHED: 23 Jan 2025 at 04:39
Three animals were seized in Chumphon’s Muang city on Wednesday while being delivered to Bangkok.
They were found in a delivery vehicle driven by Winai, 63, with Kalaya, 45, sitting in the front passenger seats. In both instances, the women’s names were never given.
The animals, kept in large baskets, are endangered species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species ( Cites ).
The vehicle was flagged down for a research by officers at a station near a propane station.
The officers worked with the US Fish & Wildlife Service to support an investigation, which led to the arrest of the animals.
The officials also discovered in the vehicle what they believed to be exotic monkeys and a distracted, a little goat-like animal.
The creatures may have been smuggled into the country by an international animals smuggling system, police say.
Mr Winai and Ms Kalaya told authorities they had picked up the wildlife in Songkhla and were delivering them to a client in Bangkok.
Officers were checking to see if a permission had been obtained to have any of the pets or if authority had been sought with the government to possess them.
Researchers at the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation were running a test to establish where the species may have come from.
At the same time, authorities expanded their research and raided a apartment linked to the two offenders in the Ratchapruek region of Bangkok, where they found seven cotton-top tamarins and two reddish penguins.
In December 2023 the authorities sent three animals, which had been trafficked to Thailand seven years before, up to Indonesia.
An animal is transported to an atmosphere safety department after it and two people were seized in Chumphon while being delivered to someone in Bangkok on Wednesday. Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation