Interbent

Animal and plant smuggling has seen a surge lately. Due to the high prices that smugglers can charge for their merchandise, as well as the comparatively light sentencing they face if caught, many people have started to focus their criminal energies on poaching and smuggling protected animals. This has grown to astounding proportions in some areas and has been a major force in driving many countries to establish environmental police forces. Over the past few years, these forces have had some success and a few truly impressive busts. Here are the five best.

 

Hanoi, Vietnam – 2009

On January 21, 2009 Vietnamese environmental police forces seized more than two metric tons of tiger bones, bear paws and gall bladders, and various other rare bones.   Altogether, two sets of tiger bones, six frozen pieces of tiger skin, seven bear paws, 16 bear gall bladders, six porcupine stomachs, and 69 bags of bones from various wild animals were recovered from a store basement.

Vietnam has a long history of environmental crime, and is home to one of the most thriving black markets of poached animal parts. Tigers, bears, leopards, civets, pythons, monitor lizards, and pangolins (scaly anteaters) are routinely poached in Vietnam and sold through the country’s underground to the rest of the world. This seizure was considered a very good sign that Vietnam’s increased funding of environmental police was actually making an impact.

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil – 2009

On March 11, 2009 Brazilian environmental police arrested 72 people for their connection with an  international smuggling ring that traded nearly half a million wild animals every year. Parrots, jaguars, boa-constrictors, forest deers, and monkeys were all said to have been poached and sold regularly by the ring to wealthy overseas researchers or collectors.

Los Angeles, United States – 2007

In April of 2007, Hisayoshi Kojima was sentenced to 21 months in prison and fined $38,731 for 17 charges related to poaching and selling protected butterfly species. Kojima, who refers to himself as “the Indiana Jones of butterfly collecting”, is known internationally for his ability to procure rare insects. Over the course of his “career” Kojima sold many butterflies for more than $15,000.

South Africa, Africa – 2008

Jo Van Niekerk, a student of zoology at Pretoria, was sentenced in 2008 to one year in prison for trying to smuggle hundreds of reptiles from Madagascar to South Africa.

Officials say that Niekerk had over one hundred frogs and lizards sewn into the lining of his jacket and was smuggling several hundred more in his baggage. Many of the species being smuggled were very rare, and lived only in the jungles of Madagascar.

London, England – 2006

In 2006, a respected pharmacological scientist and renowned collector/cultivator of orchids was given four months in jail for attempting to smuggle over one hundred rare orchids into Britain. Dr Sian Lim was caught by customs agents carrying 126 specimens of rare orchid in his baggage, some of which have been identified as slipper orchids, some of the rarest flowers in the world.

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