At Jorge Chávez International Airport in Lima, the authorities caught a 28-year-old South Korean man who tried to bring out hundreds of protected insects from Peru. The police stopped the man, who has not been named, on November 8 after they saw his \"bulky\" abdomen that seemed rather suspicious, a statement by Peru's national forestry and wildlife service, SERFOR, issued on November 13 explained.
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A further search disclosed that the man had 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes, and nine bullet ants in bags (ziplocks) and stuck to his stomach. The insects, which are believed to have been collected unlawfully from the Madre de Dios area in the Peruvian Amazon, are now being cared for by the local authorities.
The man was flying from France to South Korea when he was intercepted. The suspect is currently being held, and SERFOR has confirmed that the Peruvian prosecutor specializing in environmental crime has launched an investigation into the matter.
Walter Silva, a wildlife expert at SERFOR, pointed out that the incident is one of the examples of the global scale of the illegal wildlife trafficking problem. \"Tarantulas are an endangered species, and they were all unlawfully taken,\" he added, stating the multi-billion-dollar global market for such trafficking.
Peru is not the only country dealing with wildlife smuggling. In December 2021, in Colombia, the authorities caught a suitcase with 232 tarantulas, 67 cockroaches, nine spider eggs, and a scorpion with its seven young, at El Dorado airport in Bogota. In addition, that same year, the Colombian authorities stopped a shipment that contained almost 3,500 shark fins which were set to go to Hong Kong.
Illegal wildlife trade is still a huge environmental problem in South America, which not only threatens species and ecosystems but also supports the illegal global markets. The authorities have been actively enhancing their operations to fight this unlawful trade.
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