Four men, including two Belgian teenagers, pleaded guilty to a Kenyan court this week for trafficking in thousands of living ants, which the Kenyan authorities said they intend to sell as pets.
The Belgians, David Lornoy and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19, were found with insects this month in a guest house near Lake Naivasha, one of the many popular natural areas of Kenya. According to Kenya Wildlife Service, they had thousands of live queens, wrapped in syringes and test tubes designed to keep insects alive for months.
The court said that the ants were worth the equivalent of around $ 7,000 and, citing intelligence reports, said they had been intended for exotic markets for pets in Europe and Asia.
The unusual case underlines what Kenyan officials say they are a trend in wildlife smuggling, which has often been associated with high -value animal species and products: there is also money during smaller and less known species. Live beetles were found hidden in snacks in Japan; Living pieces of coral are increasingly secreted through American ports.
“This case highlights a growing global threat: the biopiracy of native species,” Kenya Wildlife Service said in a statement. He said that the unauthorized collection of ants “mine not only the sovereign rights of Kenya on its biodiversity, but also deprives local communities and the research institutions of potential ecological and economic advantages.”
The queening ants that men have pleaded guilty of smuggling are very appreciated by rare collectors of insects, who often keep colonies of formicarium ants, or farms of artificial ants, where they can be observed by building complex colonies and tunnel systems. The species they collect, the Cephalotes Messor from Kenya, is the largest harvesting ant in the world.
Two other men, Dennis N’Gang’a of Kenya, and Duh Hung Nguyen, Vietnamese citizen, were also accused in a separate case to illegally collect ants and treat living wild species. They were found with hundreds of live garden ants, worth $ 1,500, said Wildlife Service.
By announcing arrests, Kenya Wildlife Service published photos of a living room strewn with test tubes, cotton tampons and packaging materials. The delicately wrapped tubes – some containing several living ants in separate compartments – have been designed to support animals for about two months, the fauna service said.
Tuesday, during an appearance in court, Mr. Lornoy and Mr. Lodewijckx appeared upset and said that they had collected the ants for fun, reported the Associated Press. They pleaded guilty and awaited the conviction.
Edwin Okoth contributed the reports.
