A Thai man was caught in an airport trying to pick up 54 ploughshare tortoises. There are perhaps 400 ploughshare tortoises in the wild.
Posted 03.28.2013 at 10:58 am
8 Comments
Smuggled Tortoises
P.Tansom/TRAFFIC
It's tough enough for a species to fend off extinction without having smugglers as natural predators. In Thailand, a species-selling hub, it's even tougher, especially when someone is trying to sell off MORE THAN 10 PERCENT OF ALL OF YOU.
Last week, a Thai man was caught trying to pick up luggage at an airport. That luggage was filled with 54 ploughshare tortoises, or Astrochelys yniphora. Since there are estimated to be as few as 400 wild ploughshare tortoises in the wild, that means the operation was an attempt to move more than 10 percent of the species. On top of that, 21 radiated tortoises, another endangered species, were being smuggled, too. A woman who the luggage was registered to was also arrested.
The tortoises were probably supposed to be sold as (really, really) exotic pets, the animal trafficking watchdog site Traffic says. That's actually more common than you'd even think. The same day, Thai airport authorities made an arrest in an attempt to smuggle 300 Indian star tortoises and 10 black pond turtles.
In the last three years, according to Traffic, Thai authorities have found 4300 tortoises and turtles being smuggled like this. Just get a normal pet, guys.
[Traffic via Treehugger]
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hopefully they're all alive and will be cared for and bred to increase the population...
I wonder how many other times this type of crime has been done before and not been caught?
Yes, I agree with shutterpod, I hope no harm has come to these turtles and the population and be increased!
OK, so if these tortoises are so rare, how was this guy able to get so many of them? Maybe he is helping the species by weeding out the ones that aren't very good at hiding?
ppardee, this wasn't a one man job. It's organized crime. Many people searching in the wild and finding the rare animals to sell outside the country. One person to get them out so if they're caught, the whole ring doesn't come down.
If those turtles could be sold, wouldn't the smuggler have an incentive to breed more of them?
Do sellers of chicken deplete the supply of chicken, or do they breed more, so that they sell more?
Some endangered species in some African countries were saved by restoring the rule of private property, as opposed to prohibition and the system of public ownership.
Public ownership creates a tragedy of the commons, it provides little incentives to preserve the species, which leads to its depletion.
See Doug French's "Property Means Preservation"
this is all because of this kid
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMNry4PE93Y
Why think about the problems of tomorrow when I can feed my kid today?
- The tragedy of the human condition.
These smugglers don't care about the rarity. When these are gone, they will just smuggle a different animal. They are all about a quick profit. To breed replacements means time, money and effort. They will never engage in such activity.