Crime Suppression Bureau of the Royal Thai Police<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The man had admitted he was delivering the animals, \u201cbut he didn\u2019t say where he got the babies from,\u201d Kasidach said. <\/p>\n
Police said they had uncovered an illegal wildlife trade network and were working to find out whether the orangutans had been bred in Thailand or abroad, he added. <\/p>\n
The operation was carried out in collaboration with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Wildlife Justice Commission in the Netherlands, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the police statement said. <\/p>\n
The department said that Stefan, the 1-month-old, is in an incubator because of weak health and Christopher, the 1-year-old, has been relocated to a sanctuary run by the agency. <\/p>\n
Authorities said the orangutans are believed to have been sold for around 300,000 Thai baht ($9,050). <\/p>\n
Orangutans are native to Sumatra and Borneo, two Southeast Asian islands that are home to some of the world\u2019s most diverse rainforests, <\/strong>and have come under threat as a result of deforestation, habitat destruction and poaching. <\/p>\n They are listed as \u201ccritically endangered\u201d under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, which assesses extinction risks. <\/p>\n
The gentle apes, once found in greater numbers across Southeast Asia, have experienced sharp population declines, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). <\/p>\n
Thailand has long been a hub for the illegal wildlife trade. <\/p>\n
Its border area with Myanmar, Laos, and China \u2013 known as the Golden Triangle \u2013 is a hotspot of cross-border trafficking, illegal wildlife trade and consumption, according to WWF. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Police in Thailand have arrested a man on suspicion of wildlife trafficking after he was found with two baby orangutans in a basket at a gas station in the Thai capital. The 47-year-old suspect was apprehended Wednesday as he was about to deliver the two primates to a customer, Thai police said in a statement…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}