AR-News: South Africa nabs more Japanese for plundering wildlife

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

japantoday
Friday, June 18, 2004
Yasuyuki Sakamoto
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa is catching an increasing number of Japanese in 
illegal possession of endangered plants and animals which fetch high prices in 
Japan.
At Cape Town airport, crowded with weekend tourists on May 14, a Japanese man 
set off a metal detector alarm because of something he was carrying and was 
subjected to a body check.
Inspectors found 37 small live lizards in paper packets concealed in the 
man's jacket.
The animals were armadillo lizards which live in dry areas in the state of 
Western Cape, southern South Africa. When it senses danger, the animal makes 
itself round by holding the tip of its tail for defense, like an armadillo.
The number of living armadillo lizards, which grow to about 20 centimeters 
long, is estimated at only 2,000 to 3,000, and it is illegal to take them out of 
the country.
The Washington Convention regulating deals in endangered plants and animals 
designates the lizard as a species facing extinction and forbids international 
trade in it.
The Japanese man and two other Japanese with him were taken into custody. One 
of them, a 38-year-old man from Osaka Prefecture, was also arrested in March 
for allegedly trying to bring 52 lizards out of South Africa.
In April, the man was fined 110,000 rand (about 2 million yen) and left South 
Africa, but he returned to smuggle lizards again.




full story:
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=feature&id=677  




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"Not having known anything better does not alleviate the suffering of the 
animal. Its fundamental desires remain and it is the frustration of those desires 
that is a great part of its suffering. There are so many examples: the dairy 
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