Woman allegedly found with 94 reptiles in wildlife trafficking crackdown

January 6, 2025 9:54 PM

Woman allegedly found with 94 reptiles in wildlife trafficking crackdown. Operation Ares leads to the arrest of a 26-year-old woman from Ashfield, Sydney who allegedly tried to export 94 live native reptiles to Hong Kong over a period of four weeks.

Authorities allegedly intercepted international mail packages containing 19 blue-tongue lizards bound for China. The lizards were found stuffed in boxes with footwear, travel coffee mugs, fishing tackle boxes, socks and newspaper.

Authorities allegedly found another 35 reptiles, including more blue-tongue lizards, Cunningham's skinks and Eastern Ranges rock skinks, with the woman when she was arrested.

Environmental Crime Investigators from Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) said they found another 40 reptiles at the woman's Ashfield apartment, including Goldfield shinglebacks, Cunningham and spiny-tailed skinks.

Australian native reptiles are listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendices to ensure that international trade does not threaten the survival of these species.

posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (8 comments total)

We get the same thing here occasionally, always either mainland Chinese or Germans, seeking to steal our skinks. They lock them up but really they should take them half-way back to whereever they were smuggling to and just throw them out, and do it very publicly.
posted by unearthed at 12:32 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]

If you ever see a new metafilter member with the handle "19 blue-tongue lizards bound for China," I'm not saying it won't be me.
posted by taz at 2:25 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]

Also, of all the weird little bytes of information zipping around my head, one of them is that Australia is SUPER super serious about this sort of thing. You do not mess around. (at least that's what my head tells me. It cannot always be trusted.)
posted by taz at 2:50 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]

There must be other people involved in this, probably multiple trappers and probably one coordinator/handler who knows the trappers, the person arrested and whoever is on the other end of this trade. I'm not a big fan of law enforcement as a cure for society's ills. Ideally, they would all find enlightenment and see the error of their ways. Unfortunately, however, they will probably all need to be arrested to prevent them from continuing to do this. What's sad is that each of these people probably started out as someone who loves nature in one way or another.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:04 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]

Authorities allegedly intercepted international mail packages containing 19 blue-tongue lizards bound for China

The package handler became suspicious after seeing a blue tongue darting in and out of the box.
posted by Lemkin at 6:14 AM on January 7

That's a lot of herps!
posted by Captaintripps at 6:18 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

Also, of all the weird little bytes of information zipping around my head, one of them is that Australia is SUPER super serious about this sort of thing. You do not mess around. (at least that's what my head tells me. It cannot always be trusted.)

Yes, in order of priority, Australia comes down hard on

1. smuggling guns;

2. smuggling drugs;

3. smuggling Australian wildlife;

4. smuggling large quantities of undeclared cash (you can move cash overseas or into Australia legally, but you have to declare it if it's over $10,000 Australian.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:49 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]

If you're smuggling a mildly-venomous Gila monster (from the US southwest), be sure you pronounce it correctly.
posted by neuron at 9:23 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]