Vietnam’s border guard command has seized more than 7 metric tons of rare wildlife body parts from two wooden fishing boats moving goods from Indonesia to the southern Vietnamese province of Vinh Long. The boats were found on Oct. 3 and contained 4.2 metric tons of suspected pangolin scales, nearly 1.6 metric tons of fish skin, 150 python skins, 2.3 kilograms (5 pounds) of fish gills, and 39 bird beaks, among other rare items such as teeth, bones and hides, Tuổi Trẻ News reported. The two individuals operating the boats, Vietnamese citizen Pham Van Hoan and an Indonesian citizen identified as Syamsadi, did not have documents or invoices to prove the legal origin of the products, nor documentation for the vessels. Vincent Nijman, a researcher who leads the Oxford Wildlife Trade Research Group at Oxford Brookes University, U.K, told Mongabay in a video call that the 39 bird beaks belong to critically endangered helmeted hornbills (Rhinoplax vigil), a rare species that lives in large trees in the rainforests of Borneo, Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia. A critically endangered helmeted hornbill. Image by Ian Dugdale via iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0). Nijman estimated that the amount of pangolin scales would have required killing and skinning approximately 12,000 pangolins. He said these came from the Sunda pangolin (Manis javanica), a species also listed as critically endangered. “If you manage to get 12,000 pangolins killed and skinned, if you get 39 beheaded hornbills, if you get 1.6 tons of fish skin — if you can…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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