Police in South Africa arrested a 28-year-old man after they found he was trafficking 150 venomous scorpions through Cape Town airport, police said in a press release on Saturday.
The suspect had concealed the poisonous arachnids, which were alive, between his clothing packed inside his suitcase, in response to police.
The person was detained on Friday after police shared his description and apprehended him on the airport.
“He was arrested under the Nature and Environmental Ordinance Act, being in possession of a wild animal,” the statement said, without naming the person or disclosing where his final destination was.
He is anticipated to look in court on Monday, it added.
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A picture of the scorpions shared by authorities shows them individually wrapped in plastic. The scorpions have since been handed over to a “haven” for safekeeping, police said.
This shouldn’t be the one instance of wildlife trafficking in South Africa. Last 12 months, six people were arrested there in reference to a world rhino horn trafficking network allegedly value $14 million, the BBC reported.
Wild animal trafficking also can have devastating impacts on the ecosystem, and efforts to combat it are sometimes centred on maintaining the country’s wealthy biodiversity.
In keeping with a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on wildlife trafficking in South Africa, “syndicates continually step up their brutal methods to get their hands on our wildlife to satisfy foreign market demands, while also corrupting some government officials and processes aimed toward securing our wildlife resources.”
“The criminal industry involved in wildlife trafficking runs organized multibillion-dollar operations worldwide, and their criminal enterprises by themselves won’t stop without serious and sustained intervention,” it continued.
Rhinoceros horn trafficking increased in South Africa by greater than 210 per cent between 2010 and 2016, the report found and mirrored a rise in domestic rhino poachings.
The difficulty shouldn’t be limited to South Africa. Last June, customs officials in India stopped and arrested an airline passenger travelling from Thailand after they said he was caught smuggling dozens of venomous snakes and other small reptiles into the busy city of Mumbai.
The poisonous serpents, which included 44 Indonesian pit vipers, were “concealed in checked-in baggage,” Mumbai customs agents said in a post on the time.
Officials said the passenger also stashed three spider-tailed horned vipers — venomous snakes that primarily goal small prey corresponding to birds — and five Asian leaf turtles.
In February last 12 months, agents in Mumbai stopped a smuggler carrying five siamang gibbons, a species of small, endangered apes native to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
A 2024 report on wildlife trafficking by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that the “global scope and scale of wildlife crime remain substantial.”
Seizures from 2015 to 2021 indicate “an illegal trade in 162 countries and territories affecting around 4,000 plant and animal species,” of which 3,250 are listed within the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
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