Hunting and catching wild animals against legal regulations is fined up to 800 million VND

Legal Consulting Office of Lao Dong Newspaper answers:

Clause 15, Article 24 of Decree 142/2026/ND-CP Regulating penalties for administrative violations in the field of forestry (effective from June 25, 2026), stipulates that the act of hunting, catching, killing, raising, and keeping forest animals in violation of legal regulations shall be penalized as follows: A fine of from 360 million VND to 400 million VND shall be imposed for violations with exhibits being forest animals belonging to the List of endangered, precious, and rare forest plants and animals of Group IB with a number of 02 animal-class individuals or from 05 to 06 bird-class, reptile-class individuals or from 06 to 09 other animal-class individuals.

Article 4, Decree 142/2026/ND-CP stipulates:

1. For each administrative violation in the field of forestry, organizations and individuals must bear one of the main forms of punishment, which is a warning or a fine. The level of fine for administrative violations specified in this Decree is determined as follows:

a) The fine level specified in Chapter II of this Decree is the level applicable to individuals;

b) For organizations with administrative violations of the same type and level as individuals, they will be fined twice the fine level applied to individuals except as prescribed in Clause 4, Article 27;

c) The maximum fine in the forestry sector for individuals is 500 million VND and for organizations is 1 billion VND.

Thus, from June 25, 2026, hunting and catching forest animals on the list of endangered, precious, and rare forest animals of group IB in violation of legal regulations may be fined up to 400 million VND for individuals and 800 million VND for organizations according to the above regulations.