Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species.
Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives.
They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal.
In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a and Vietnamese Duh Hung Nguyen also were charged with illegal trafficking in the same courtroom, following their arrest while in possession of 400 ants.
The Kenya Wildlife Service said the four men were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia, and that the species included Messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large, red harvester ant native to east Africa.
The illegal export of the ants “not only undermines Kenya’s sovereign rights over its biodiversity, but also deprives local communities and research institutions of potential ecological and economic benefits,” the Kenya Wildlife Service said in a statement.
Kenya has fought against the trafficking of body parts of larger species of wild animals such as elephants, rhinos and pangolins among others, but the cases against the four men represent “a shift in trafficking trends — from iconic large mammals to lesser-known yet ecologically critical species,” it said.
The two Belgians were arrested in Kenya’s Nakuru county, which is home to national parks. The 5,000 ants were found in a guest house where they were staying and were packed in 2,244 test tubes that had been filled with cotton wool to enable the ants to survive for months.
A court document said that authorities had intercepted about 5,000 queens packed in 2,244 containers, with a street value of about 1 million Kenyan shillings (US$7,700).
The other two men were arrested in Nairobi where they were found to have 400 ants in their apartments.
Philip Muruthi, a vice president for conservation at the Africa Wildlife Foundation in Nairobi, said that ants enrich soils, enabling germination and providing food for species such as birds.
“The thing is, when you see a healthy forest, like Ngong forest, you don’t think about what is making it healthy. It is the relationships all the way from the bacteria to the ants to the bigger things,” he said.
Muruthi warned of the risk of trafficking species and exporting diseases to the agricultural industry of the destination countries.
“Even if there is trade, it should be regulated and nobody should be taking our resources just like that,” he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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