Mawas = Orangutan Poached?

Are reports of the Johor Bigfoot baby being captured, then denied, actually based on some poaching activity of out-of-place orangutans with a new range in Malaysia? – Loren

KOTA TINGGI: Could the people in four-wheel-drive vehicles and a truck purportedly carrying a baby Bigfoot, who dropped in for dinner at a restaurant at a rest area at Felda Tenggaroh 2 here last month, be poachers?

This is the question on the minds of people at the rest area who saw the group of about 20 men and their vehicles bearing the Wildlife Department licence plates.

The Wildlife Department has denied that such an operation was carried out by its officers.

They are now asking if the group, which had also been seen at two other rest stops along Jalan Mersing and the town area around the same time, could be Bigfoot poachers.

According to people at Felda Tenggaroh 2, it was raining at the time and the casually-dressed men who arrived in their mud-splattered vehicles were sitting near the shop after having their dinner.

Some of the men were seen chatting with a couple of salesgirls at a shop, and when asked where they came from, they said had come from the jungle further up Jalan Mersing.

The men also told the girls that they had come from Kuala Lumpur and had camped in the jungle for the past two or three days, adding that they had shot a baby Bigfoot using a tranquiliser gun.

When the girls asked if it was a mawas (orang utan) they had shot, the men confirmed that it was indeed a Bigfoot creature and volunteered to show it to them.

However, when the girls went outside the shop with the men, the truck where the baby Bigfoot was believed to have been kept, was just being driven away.

Met yesterday, the girls said following a newspaper report on their story about the Bigfoot hunters on Wednesday, officers from the district Wildlife Department had quizzed them on the validity of their story.

The girls, who did not wish to be named, said they told the officers what they had seen and heard from members of the expedition group last month.

A businessman at the Kota Tinggi town area, who had also met the expedition members, claimed that he had taken a peek into the truck purportedly containing the Bigfoot and saw something big lying inside.

However, as the window screen of the truck was tinted, he could not see the creature clearly.

He added that the group members had turned down his request to photograph the creature with his camera phone.

Meanwhile, bio-diversity researcher Vincent Chow said there was absolutely no protection for the Johor Bigfoot and, therefore, it was easy for poachers to capture them.

“The Bigfoot, which has been frequently sighted at the fringes of the jungle here recently, has not been placed on the State’s list of endangered species and no law has been drawn up to protect them.

“This is a dangerous situation and if nothing is done, the Bigfoot population in our jungles could be wiped out,” he said.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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