Ho Chi Minh City resident voluntarily hands over stray clouded monitor to rangers
Sunday, June 12, 2022, 16:26 GMT+7
A man in Ho Chi Minh City has handed a clouded monitor, which strayed into his house, to local forest rangers, as a move to contribute to protecting rare and endangered wild animals.
Dang Van Ka, a resident of Binh Tan District, transferred the animal, weighing about 1.3 kilograms, to the municipal Forest Protection Department on Saturday.
The clouded monitor was sent to the city’s Cu Chi Wildlife Rescue Center on the same day for necessary care before it can be released back to nature, the department said.
The animal, with the scientific name Varanus nebulosus, belongs to the endangered, rare, and precious wildlife species of group IB that needs to be protected under a decree issued by the central government in 2019, according to local rangers.
Ka Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper the same day that he suddenly found the animal clinging on the curtains of his house door when he returned home about ten days ago.
Ka and a friend of his then caught the animal and put it in a cage.
After an online search for relevant information, Ka identified the stray animal to be a clouded monitor, among the endangered wildlife, so he decided to contact the department for the handover.
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| This image shows Dang Van Ka pointing his hand to the door curtains where the clouded monitor clung on after straying into his home in early June 2022. Photo: Ngoc Khai / Tuoi Tre |
“I do not know where the animal came from,” Ka said.
“I think someone might have raised it before it escaped from its cage.
“I handed the animal over to the agency so that it can return to its natural habitat soon.”
Last month, the department also received three wild animals voluntarily transferred by residents in District 7 and Thu Duc City.
They included a pig-tailed macaque, a red-faced monkey, and a yellow mountain turtle, which are endangered, rare, and precious wildlife species, too.
Transporting, trading, capturing or killing wild animals or parts thereof is a criminal offense in Vietnam punishable by between six months and 12 years in prison, according to the Penal Code.
Since 1994, Vietnam has been party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international agreement between governments with an aim to protect endangered plants and animals.
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