Orangutan Trafficking in Sumatra Shows Organised Wildlife Trade, Aceh – North Sumatra

During the investigation of the wildlife trade circulation network, we must be honest, the most common obstacle we face is, we often lose track most of the time.

Our collected data related to the Sumatran orangutan trafficking on the ground covering the two provinces, Aceh and North Sumatra have shown the trafficking syndicates are very well-organized wildlife crimes. The source of the problem to this case, was not only due to economic factors, most of the traffickers are highly connected to the bigger links of wildlife trafficking syndicates.

Our collected investigation report shows, orangutan trafficking cases from 2019 to 2022 have occurred 22 times. The trafficking network between Aceh and North Sumatra can never be separated.

Orangutan Rescue: The Fallen Deer.

“The Fallen Deer” is our private term to name our successful operation to dismantle an orangutan trafficking syndicate involving a sneaky trafficker who has a big knowledge and experience, Thomas Diraider Chaniago.

A trafficking network controlled by a young boy was at least temporarily cut off after he was arrested on April 28, 2022. We have to admit, other big networks remain to exist. The Sumatran orangutan market demands will continue as long as the zoos are there.

Looking at how Thomas’s network runs, has provided us more clues into how wildlife trafficking involving orangutans, were controlled by market demands and depending on providers such as poachers, collectors, and specialist brokers. Each orangutan trafficking network has its own unique, in determining how transactions to be carried out.

#MansfeldOperation funded operation has successfully finished its 2019-2021 task, cutting the line of the orangutan trafficking network, however, we knew, there have been a few missing from our track.

Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) is a key species and endemic to Sumatra, conservation organizations are focussed on this species. There have been competitions on the ground, but the goal remains the same, to save the poached and trafficked orangutans.

SUMECO (Sumatra Ecoproject), we are a small organization, based in Bukit Lawang, has contributed as well to have saved some of them, despite being overwhelmed by overlapping interests and authorities, the good team and friends who are authorities and forest police of Gunung Leuser National Park have been tireless helping and teamed up.

Traffickers use many methods to trade the orangutans, they used delivery services, public transport, and their own field agents. This gives us more questions, there might be many possibilities that we were not able to detect it, and that’s gonna be extremely difficult.

BBKSDASU (Conservation and Nature Agency of North Sumatra) and BBTNGL (Gunung Leuser National Agency) have been known as two official agencies, expected to take important roles to dismantle the wildlife trafficking network between Aceh and North Sumatra.

Gunung Leuser National is a huge conservation area that has been marked as the main core, man-powered security task force will be exhausted to protect the whole park, while BBKSDA in Aceh and North Sumatra province to be the official front-liner and wildlife authority, once the poached animals were brought out of Gunung Leuser National Park. However, poachers, collectors, brokers, and sellers who were engaged in wildlife trafficking syndicates had managed to find the way by themselves.