VietNamNet Bridge – Police in southern Binh Phuoc Province has detained a poacher to investigating the killing of 18 black-shanked doucs, an endangered, extremely rare species of wild monkey, in Bu Gia Map National Park.

A joint patrol team including police and forest rangers arrested 48-year-old Bui Van Ngay on June 28 when they discovered a hut erected illegally in the park’s sub-zone 5.

Upon searching the hut, the team found the dried bodies of 18 black-shanked doucs (Pygathrix nigripes), weighing 50 kg in total, said Vuong Duc Hoa, deputy director of the park.

Subsequent tests from the Institute of Tropical Biology, under the Ministry of Science and Technology, confirmed the team’s identification of the animals, Hoa said.

Ngay, of the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong, has confessed to investigators that he had broken into the park along with a few other poachers and then shot the animals, senior lieutenant colonel Nguyen Khac Truong, chief police of the Bu Gia Map District, said.

The police are hunting for Ngay’s accomplices in the case.

A similar case occurred in Nui Chua National Park in central Ninh Thuan Province on July 19, 2011, when police arrested two men, Nguyen Minh Tuan, 37, and Dang Minh Khac, 20, both from Khanh Hoa province, for shooting 15 black-shanked doucs with a hunting rifle

Tuan and Khac said the endangered animals’ meat was material for preparing traditional Chinese medicine.

VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre