Another story grabbed my attention in the NST today.Elizabeth John looks at the fallout from the publication of The Lizard King :The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers by Bryan Christy, a book which exposes the international wildlife trade. It features notorious Malaysian wildlife smuggler Anson Wong, now imprisoned in the US and described as:
... reptile smuggling's crown jewel ...
(Malaysia boleh! Haha. Shall we put this one into The Malaysia Book of Records too?)
In a chapter called Fortress Malaysia, Christy apparently describes how a high-level government official is implicated in helping Wong with the paperwork. It also implicates National Perhilitan officials whom Wong apparently boasted about bribing to falsify permits. Christy apparently based his information on thousands of pages of telephone transcripts and investigative reports from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.The Wildlife Department calls the book "simply fiction".
It would be simply awful if, as the Malay proverb goes if the rice crop is eaten by the fence set up to protect it. The truth is out there somewhere and I hope, for the sake of our wildlife, that the matter is carefully investigated with no whitewash.
Christy's website for the book (a must read for me now) is here (he links to today's NST story and invites your thoughts) and it is reviewed by Janet Maslin in the New York Times.
