Brazil steps up the fight against animal smuggling
Date: 25-Oct-99
Country: BRAZIL
An estimated 12 million animals are smuggled out of Brazil every year
generating annual revenues of $1.5 billion for dealers, said Denner
Giovanini, head of the National Network Against the Trafficking of Wild
Animals (RENCTAS).
"Unfortunately the government has still not woken up to this problem,"
Giovanini told Reuters. "Of the agents in charge of monitoring
environmental crimes, who are very few in Brazil, I would say 95 percent
are not prepared to do a good job."
The training course, launched in Brasilia this week and about to go
nationwide, aims to rectify this by teaching officers skills such as
detecting forged export permits.
Brazil, home to a vast variety of ecosystems ranging from the Amazon
rain forest to the Pantanal wetlands, is a rich source of exotic species
including jaguars and alligators.
But only one of every 10 animals removed from their natural habitat
survive the journey to private collectors, pet shops and pharmaceutical
firms in Europe, said Giovanini.
To illustrate the extreme techniques used by smugglers, he cited the
case of a German dealer recently arrested at Sao Paulo's international
airport with 550 Amazon frogs and 80 snakes stuffed into his luggage.
The recently created RENCTAS, which is privately funded but works in
partnership with the federal police and the government's Environment
Agency (Ibama), is struggling to combat the problem on shoestring
resources.
Its 1999 budget is just $60,000, the same amount as a dealer can fetch
by selling a single lear macaw, a species native to Brazil of which only
132 are left in the wild, he said.