It’s been an emotional two years since the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) raided the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT), seizing animals, levying fines and accusing Dutch conservationist and owner of the WFFT, Edwin Wiek, of illegally appropriating animals.
Edwin Wiek.
For nine days, from Feb 15 to 23, approximately 150 armed DNP officers took over the centre in Petchaburi acting on an anonymous tip-off that there were 15 illegal wild baby elephants on site. Some 103 of the 400 animals were taken.
Wiek maintains that the accusations and tip-offs were fabricated as part of an ongoing vendetta to discredit him. Wiek is known in both the Thai and international media for his criticism of animal poaching, illegal trading and treatment of animals in Thailand, and the alleged revealing of people and departments involved.
Within hours of the raid in 2012, Wiek, his wife Noi, and the WFFT as an entity, were charged, and all three were found guilty of illegal wildlife possession and given a suspended jail term of two years and fined 90,000 baht — the highest fine in Thai history for such an offence.
The Dutch embassy provided a letter as guarantee for Wiek and he, along with his wife, was released from jail.
Wiek appealed the decision and in February the Court Of Appeal overturned the conviction of illegal possession of protected species on the strength of evidence provided in court that showed the WFFT had registered the animals correctly.
The fine was promptly returned to the defendants, but only four of the animals have since been returned. Wiek plans to petition for their return at the end of the month.
This was not Wiek’s first criminal court case that has been brought against him and which he has subsequently won. In 2010, he was charged with slander in the civil and criminal courts by the Tiger Temple after calling it a “cruel place”. Wiek was also charged with slander two years later, after the raid, by then DNP director Damrong Pidhet, when Wiek said that five officials were guilty of the illegal trade of elephant parts. The case never went to court, but the deputy park chief at Kaeng Krachan National Park was later convicted and given a suspended jail term, but the other four were acquitted.
Although one of the most active conservationists in Thailand, Wiek’s path into wildlife rescue was less than typical. When he first came to the country, in 1989, it was to observe Thai fashion and not the nation’s animals.
“I was working for a fashion trader, but soon found that I wanted to stay here, so started my own business and built a factory producing fashion accessories,” he said.
In 1999, however, Wiek had a car accident that changed everything. “I lost interest and wanted to do something else. After a bad experience with a Thai NGO that helped wildlife, I decided to set up the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand in 2001 and commit three to four years to it. Little did I know that 13 years later I would still be working on it and that it would have grown so big.”
Life spoke with Wiek about the ongoing pressure he experiences working in animal conservation in Thailand and how it all started when a Scottish friend bought a monkey named Kijke for his Thai wife.
Have you always had an interest in campaigning for the proper treatment of wildlife?
I’ve always had a thing for animals. I grew up on an old farm with horses, dogs, rabbits and more, but my interest in protecting wildlife came after having lived for 10 years in Thailand and seeing what happened to the animals at the hands of illegal traders and poachers, and sometimes well-meaning but ignorant people that kept wildlife as pets.
Were you involved in conservation at home or did it start when you came to Thailand?
I’ve lived here since 1989. I spent two years in Bangkok, then moved to Phetchaburi in 1992 and visited Kaeng Krachan National Park on an almost weekly basis. Here I saw my first gibbons, bears and elephants in the wild, but soon also found these animals in people’s gardens, chained to trees or locked up in tiny cages. This is where I first became aware of the plight of wildlife. Although I thought it was not my problem and probably too big an issue to tackle, I changed that view later on by thinking I could not change the whole world by rescuing these animals, but that I could change the whole world for those animals.
What prompted you to open the WFFT?
The car accident made me make the move, somehow I felt that it was now or never. Most people start charities when they are old and have enough experience and money to do it, I was 35 and felt that I could use my experience and motivation to make a difference. Lots of my friends and family said I was crazy and some even stopped contacting me for a while. I opened the first centre in 2001 at Kao Look Chang temple, where we still have the biggest operation.
Were there any difficulties in opening the rescue centre? Was any of this, in your opinion, down to you being a foreigner?
Yes, as a foreigner you are a farang, and the majority of Thai people, especially upcountry, like to think that as a farang you can never understand Thailand, even if you live here over 20 years and speak and read the language. Furthermore, the authorities do not appreciate any help and see our interest more or less as a nuisance. On the other hand, it is sometimes good to be foreign, as you can speak plainly and straight and claim 'that is the way we do things'.
Do you remember the first animal you took in?
The first wild animal I helped was a long-tailed macaque called Kijke. He was a baby monkey that a Scottish friend of mine bought for his Thai wife. He discovered very quickly that it was not an ideal animal for a pet and so brought it to me. That is how it basically started, I went to look for a rescue centre but couldn’t find one, so joined a wildlife rescue group in Thailand and started to build a wildlife rescue centre. Sounds crazy enough doesn’t it? [Kijke — which means “watching” in Dutch — is still with Wiek but now lives in the open forest enclosure of the WFFT].
What are your thoughts on the number of wildlife rehabilitation centres in the Kingdom and places offering people the chance of ‘meeting’ and having their photographs taken with wildlife?
The objectives are easy — either you work with animals for financial gain, or you work for the welfare and/or conservation of these animals. You can’t have both. There are places where hundreds of people visit every day to pose with tigers, which has nothing to do with the conservation of wildlife at all. At the same time baby elephants, gibbons and lorises are poached from the wild to end up as tourist entertainment and photo ops around the country, resulting not just in damage to conservation, but also to animal welfare.
It is kind of fashionable to state that elephant camps now are rescue centres, but when the elephants at these places are still chained up and people still ride them, using bullhooks, they do not really qualify as such. Medical care is still lacking at many of these places.
What are the current main issues concerning wildlife conservation in Thailand?
One of Thailand’s biggest problems is the ivory trade — even though the prime minister promised a year ago during the Cites [Convention of International Trade in endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora] conference in Bangkok that she would ban the legal ivory trade in Thailand, she has failed to do so. The local trade in ivory is a legal loophole for international trade in both African and Asian ivory from wild elephants. This really has to be stopped.
A second problem is law enforcement. Too often people that are found to possess or trade wildlife have contacts within the law enforcement agencies and get away with it. Also, the profits are very high, while maximum penalties are just 40,000 baht. This makes it lucrative for these individuals to continue the evil trade. A recent example was that of a man caught last year with 16 tiger cubs on the highway in Khon Kaen, his profit would have been over 1 million baht on this one trip, but he received only a suspended jail term of one year and a 20,000 baht fine. That will not stop him from doing it again.
A third problem is the care of confiscated wild animals. The government does not allocate enough budget to the department, while NGOs are not allowed to help out, resulting in a death rate of over 50% of confiscated wildlife.
In a perfect world, what would be the best way to co-operate between NGOs and authorities for the sake of wildlife conservation and animal welfare?
The government has to stop seeing non-governmental organisations as anti-government agencies. Co-operation with or assistance from NGOs will mean we are sharing knowledge, financial means and networking, resulting in better standards of care for wildlife, while the sharing of intelligence will better help control the illegal trade and poaching, which would contribute to wildlife conservation.
