Endangered Endangered, 1 Alive and 1 dead, found in a checked bag at an airport in India
Indian Customs officials arrested a passenger after finding two endangered gibbons stuffed inside a checked bag, the latest animals seized from Slugglers at Mumbai airport.
One of the small animals from Indonesia was dead, while the other, in a video shared by the Indian culture, was seen in the arms of the official, arranged in the air before covering his face with his arm.
Customs said the passenger, who was traveling from Malaysia via Thailand, was given rare animals for wildlife smuggling to be “delivered” to India. Police acting on “specific intelligence” arrested the passenger in Mumbai on Thursday.
“The next search of their checked baggage, the trolley bag, was led to the discovery and recovery of two silvery gibbons (hylobates Moloch), one of which was dead,” said the Customs Department.
Cultures of Mumbai
The Department also said that about 8 kilograms of hydroponic weed was found hidden in the passengers’ luggage.
The Wildlife Trade Monitor Traffic, which combats wildlife and plant trafficking, warned in June of a ‘trend’ in the ‘trafficking trend’ of lubricants driven by the pet trade.
More than 7,000 animals, dead and alive, have been taken along the Thailand-India Air Route in the last 3.5 years, it said.
The wild home of the small silvery gibbon is the rain forest of Java in Indonesia.
They are threatened by deforestation, hunting and the pet trade, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Estimates of the remaining primates range from about 2,500 to 4,000.
The attack follows recent smuggling busts at the airport.
Just a week ago, customs officials said they arrested another smuggler with snakes, turtles and a raccoon.
In June, the culture of Mumbai shared with two passengers from Thailand with many voiland and more than 100 creatures, including creatures, sunbirds and trees-climbing opportunities, and from Thailand.
In February, customs officials at the Mumbai airport stopped a smuggler with five Siamang gibbons, an ape native to the forests of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
Exotic primates have also been smuggled across the US-Mexico border recently. Jim Stinebaugh, special agent with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, he told CBS news About 90 of those spiders have been seized along the Texas-Mexico border in the past 18 months — and that’s believed to be just a fraction of the total number of spiders brought illegally into the United States.
