By Hilary Chiew and Joshua Foong

PETALING JAYA: Besides keeping animals illegally, the controversial zoo in a southern state was also implicated in the smuggling of the critically endangered orangutan.

It was one of the private facilities in the country that is known to have acquired smuggled orangutan in recent years where the animals were confiscated and repatriated by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan).

This was confirmed by Perhilitan, thus contradicting the assertion of the zoo that the department took away a pair of its orangutan for breeding in Indonesia a year ago.

It is unclear if the zoo was penalised for the offence but it appeared that its special permit for orangutan was never revoked.

Instead, its orangutan collection was replaced; a six-year-old female was delivered in June last year followed by a 15-year-old male in December.

Perhilitan deputy director-general Misliah Mohamad Basir said the replacements were from the Bukit Merah Lake Town Resort as part of the department's breeding loan programme, adding that it is an effort to promote eco-tourism in Johor.

In 2006, Malaysia repatriated seven Sumatran orangutan that were removed from a resort in Malacca and one from the Johor zoo following a nationwide DNA finger-printing exercise that revealed that 12 out of 58 orangutan held at seven facilities were Sumatran and the remaining 46 were Borneans.

However, in Perhilitan's communication in 2005 with British-based NatureAlert that had taken an interest in the smuggled orangutan scandal, it was revealed that seven Borneans belonging to the Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii supspecies (found in Sarawak and western Kalimantan) would be repatriated.

-The Star/Asia News Network