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Airport authorities make horrifying discovery after noticing movement in traveler's luggage: 'Inflicts untold harm'
An Indian man was arrested after allegedly trying to smuggle monkeys and tortoises into India after a trip to Thailand.
The incident occurred at the international airport in Chennai, India. The Week reports that customs officials became suspicious of a passenger's luggage after a flight landed from Bangkok.
Officials examined the man's checked luggage, and inside one bag, they found two ventilated bags and a taped-up cloth bag.
"On closer inspection, movements were noticed inside the ventilated bags," customs officials said in a release.
At that point, officials found two African black monkeys, each hidden inside a separate ventilated bag, and seven African tortoises wrapped inside the cloth bag.
The passenger, a 40-year-old man from Chennai, had just returned from a trip to Thailand, DT Next reports. He could not provide proper documentation for the animals, so he was arrested under India's Customs Act and Wildlife Protection Act.
The animals were sent back to Thailand.
The United Nations' latest World Wildlife Crime Report found that, from 2015 to 2021, illegal trading affected roughly 4,000 plant and animal species and occurred in more than 160 countries and territories.
Recently, Malaysian law enforcement discovered nearly 2,000 pounds of body parts from endangered green sea turtles during the routine patrol of a boat off the Sabah coast. In Indonesia, officials stopped an operation that attempted to smuggle hundreds of songbirds from Bali to Central Java.
In that example, 32 of the birds had sadly passed away by the time they were found. That's an unfortunate reality of many animal-smuggling operations, as the animals are typically placed in cramped spaces, without access to the food, water, and light they desperately need.
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Even if animals survive their journey, they can cause major damage to their new ecosystems. Anytime a foreign animal is introduced to a new locale, it could become an invasive species — one which spreads quickly in its new surroundings and steals valuable resources from native plants and wildlife.
Just like many countries, India has strong laws against trafficking wildlife. But, as the U.N. notes, much illegal smuggling is connected with some of the world's largest organized crime groups.
To truly improve conditions for wildlife and to slow this abhorrent practice, the U.N. says that more consistent and comprehensive data is needed on wildlife crime. This will require significant investment, not just at the country level, but also globally.
"Wildlife crime inflicts untold harm upon nature, and it also jeopardizes livelihoods, public health, good governance and our planet's ability to fight climate change," Ghada Waly, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said in a release. "To address this crime, we must match the adaptability and agility of the illegal wildlife trade."
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