Vietnam has seized eight tonnes of pangolin scales and elephant ivory shipped from Nigeria, police said Friday, the second such haul in a week in a country which both consumes and trafficks huge volumes of endangered African wildlife.
The ivory and pangolin trade is banned by Vietnam, but sales continue to flourish on the black market due to demand domestically and from neighbouring China, which feeds the global $20 billion industry.
The eight-tonne shipment was discovered Thursday at a port in the coastal city of Danang, according to the Hai Quan online newspaper, a state-run mouthpiece for Vietnam’s customs office, making it “the country’s biggest ever bust over the past several years.”
“The batch originated from Nigeria,” it said, adding that officials took several hours to tally up the ivory tusks and pangolin scales, which…
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