Wildlife smuggling only second to drugs on U.S.-Mexico border

Wildlife smuggling only second to drugs on U.S.-Mexico border

Friday, June 24, 2005; Posted: 2:42 p.m. EDT (18:42 GMT)

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- When it comes to smuggling animals across the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Wildlife Inspector Ed Marshall has seen it all.

Exotic birds given Valium or tequila so they stay quiet through Customs inspections. Sleeves moving with hidden reptiles. Wildcats stashed in trunks. Last week, the Border Patrol seized two white tigers on their way to Mexico.

And in 2001, an African elephant was smuggled across the Gateway International Bridge on a truck. "They call it the 'Dumbo Case,"' Marshall said, shaking his head.

The contraband is part of a global trade in endangered wildlife estimated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at $4.2 billion a year, second only to illegal drugs.

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/06/24/wildlife.smuggling.ap/index.html

from these horrible wild animals. :sarcasm:

Yes, animal smuggling may be second to drugs, but put it in context. Compared to the drug trade, a $4.2 billion wildlife trade is chump change.

http://www.awionline.org/wildlife/aa-trade.htm

Animal-related drug smuggling has a large financial incentive. Dick Smith (former deputy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)), estimates the profitability of wildlife smuggling at $5 billion a year (with many animals being worth more, ounce for ounce, than cocaine) while the World Wildlife Fund places the estimate at $20 billion annually. Combining the two forms of trafficking increases the already huge profits of the multibillion-dollar drug trade. According to Craig van Note, executive vice president of Monitor, an international ecological consortium, "Police agencies around the world are facing the fact that the drug smuggling goes hand-in-hand with wildlife smuggling and vice versa." The USFWS recognizes that smugglers often trade illegal drugs for endangered animals in cashless transfers.

The macabre list of examples of intermingled wildlife/drug smuggling provides a frightening insight into the creative and cruel mind of the smuggler: heroin hidden in snakes, snails, or elephant tusks, cannabis stuffed into antelope heads, cocaine surreptitiously inserted into gutted parrot carcasses, and heroin-filled pouches implanted into the stomachs of large, expensive goldfish. Domestic animals are also used as unsuspecting drug couriers. In December 1994, a debilitated English sheepdog named Cokey arrived from Colombia at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport with ten cocaine-filled balloons surgically implanted into her abdomen.

Two particularly egregious cases highlight how scheming smugglers continually develop innovative ways to use animals to transport drugs. In one case, dubbed Operation Cocaine Constrictor, more than 300 boa constrictors from Colombia were implanted with cocaine-filled condoms inserted into their rectums (which were then sewn shut), causing the deaths of all but 63 of the creatures. It may very well have been the assumption that few wildlife inspectors would want to closely examine a shipment of snakes that lead the smugglers to devise such a cruel ploy.

In 1993, Operation Fishnet focused on a case in which liquid cocaine was carefully mixed into clear outer bags that were placed around inner bags containing valuable tropical fish. The shipments from Colombia were scrutinized only after some leaking bags emitted a strange odor, while others had a curious sediment buildup on the bottom of the bags. Bizarre cases like these point not only to the use of legal wildlife shipments to transport contraband, but also highlight the overwhelming need to increase funding for the Division of Law Enforcement in the USFWS. There is a "Catch-22" in the current inspection system in which the Drug Enforcement Administration has the funds and expertise to pursue drug smugglers but has no reason to inspect wildlife shipments, while the USFWS, with heightened expertise in wildlife inspection, is woefully underfunded and understaffed and cannot possibly inspect all imported shipments, especially in cities like Miami that become hubs for the importation of wildlife and drugs from Central and South America.

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Just leave the freaking animals alone.