Four vendors in Stung Treng City fled on Wednesday after officials confiscated more than 170 kg of wild meat and rescued a dozen live animals from their market stalls, officials said.
Forestry officials worked alongside military police and the NGO Wildlife Alliance to raid the Stung Treng commune market on Wednesday morning, said Heng Kimchhay, chief wildlife rescue leader with the Forestry Administration.
“The wildlife meat sellers escaped from their stalls when they saw that military police and a group of forestry administration officials had gone into the market,” he said.
Mr. Kimchhay said authorities were searching for the vendors, whom he did not name.
Officials found a bounty of fresh and dried wild meat alongside legal meat products, including 83 kg of wild pig, 55 kg of sambar deer, 31 kg of roe deer and nearly 3 kg of wild monkey, as well as three dead slow lorises and eight porcupines.
They also found 10 live Asian water monitors and two turtles, which were to be returned to the forest.
The meat was to be buried.
