Thai police have arrested two men after they intercepted a pickup transporting dozens of monkeys inside mesh bags and a quantity of methamphetamine, authorities said, in one of two cases that saw 143 monkeys rescued from suspected wildlife smugglers in a single day.
Thailand is an international hub for wildlife trafficking, one of the world’s biggest illegal trades estimated to be worth between $7.8 and $10 billion per year, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In the first case, rangers were patrolling in southeast Thailand’s Khlong Hat District, near the border with Cambodia, when they heard “unusual animal noises” coming from a sugarcane field, according to a press release from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation (DNP).
After checking the area, the authorities found 10 plastic baskets hidden in the sugarcane containing 62 long-tailed macaques, a monkey native to Southeast Asia which is widely used in drug development because its DNA closely mirrors that of humans.
There is also a thriving black market for the species, which is considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
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