A history of insect traffic that has become a state issue. A Kenya court sentenced four people on Wednesday, May 8, including two Belgian teenagers, to pay a fine of more than $ 7,000 for trying to bring thousands of living ants to the country.
The case has reached the headlines in this country in East Africa where the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS), the National Conservation Agency, accused the four people of participating in “biopyrría”.
The Belgians David Lornay and Seppe Lodewijckx, 18, Duh Vietnamese hung Nguyen and Kenya Dennis Nganga, declared themselves guilty of ants, but denied having tried to make the traffic of these insects.
According to the AFP accusation law, the Belgian suspects were arrested on April 5 at a pension that limits with the Naivaha lake, in the center of Kenya, in possession of 5,000 queens, whose species Messor Cephalotas, originally from the region, therefore, each can be worth around one hundred euros, inserted in 2,244 test tubes.
7,700 euros of ants
A judicial document indicates that ants, of the estimated market value at around $ 7,700, can survive at least two months in containers. David Lornay was presented as a anthill, who maintained colonies in his home in Belgium and was part of a Facebook group dedicated to these insects.
Dennis Nganga and Duh Hung Nguyen, according to their accusation, were also arrested on April 5, in the counties of Nairobi and Machakos with several hundred ants in some 140 syringes. They also declared themselves guilty. The two cases were different, but the four defendants were judged together.
The main magistrate, Njeri Thuku, referred to the slave trade during the verdict declaration. “Imagine being violently expelled from your home and accumulated in a container with many other people like you. Then imagine being isolated and stuck in a small space where the only source of food for the near future is water with glucose,” he wrote.
“It seems almost a reference” to the “slave trade.” “However, it is not a matter of slave trade, but of the illegal trade of wild species,” he added.
“They are not typical furtive hunters”
The possession of any specimen or trophy of wild animals without a license is a criminal crime in Kenya, responsible for a minimum fine of around 10,000 dollars and/or a possible prison sentence of at least five years.
The court said on Wednesday that the suspects could spend a year in prison or pay a fine of one million chelines ($ 7,740), or the value estimated by the police of the seized ants.
The jurisdiction added that the two Belgians “did not resemble the typical poachers” and that they were not aware of the law, considering that however the case reflects a scenario “that has already occurred in the last centuries (…) when Africa had resources looted by the West and now by the East.”
KWS filed a complaint against the four young people, saying that it was not only a “crime against wildlife, but also an act of biopyrry.”
The suspects “intended to pass ants in smuggling to high -value exotic animal markets in Europe and Asia, where the demand for rare insect species is increasing,” he added in a statement.
Source: BFM TV
