Protecting Vietnam’s wildlife is not an easy task for the nation’s rangers. Once animals enter the trade from the wild, authorities must rely on solid information from concerned citizens and informants in order to catch traders as they try to move their illegal cargos north. Like drug traffickers, traders are always changing their routes and inventing new ways to avoid inspection, so that they can reap the lucrative profits that await them in Chinese markets.

The following includes feedback from rangers working the front lines of wildlife protection:

  Nghe An rangers report tanker trucks coming in from Laos with wildlife smuggled inside the tank and utility boxes on and underneath the truck.
  Thanh Hoa rangers discovered sacks of turtles hidden under fish packed in ice on a frozen foods truck out of Ho Chi Minh City.
  Ninh Binh rangers recently checking the roof on the top of a bus discovered 18 pangolins and 14 cobras in sacks hidden beneath a well-camouflaged false roof.
  Traders are reportedly using private cars and even mini-tourist vans to smuggle wildlife. Earlier this year two bears and a clouded leopard were discovered drugged with ketamine and hidden in the trunk of a trader’s car.
  Thanh Hoa rangers report that a well-known man from the south uses three refrigerator trucks he owns to ship wildlife cargos to the north. To avoid detection, he frequently changes the registration number on his truck to different provinces. He has reportedly been caught twice in Thanh Hoa and once in Ninh Binh.

     Wildlife traders are often in possession of papers showing that some or all of the animals that they possess were raised on farms, and therefore not illegally exploited from the wild. While there have been successful advances in the domestic rearing of certain species of wildlife, such as crocodiles, traders often attempt to circumvent the law by claiming that animals that they have illegally obtained are "farmed species", and are therefore legal to trade. This is particularly true in the case of hard-shelled turtles, where growth requires many years of investment into feeding and care before the turtles reach a reasonable weight to sell.
     Based on current market prices, and the long-term investment required for a turtle to reach a sellable size, hard-shelled turtles observed in the trade are with few exceptions, harvested illegally from the wild. Note: A “farmed species” by definition must be born and bred from parents in captivity.