Conservationists fight against smugglers

"Anything to declare?", asked a custome officer. A tourist on his way to Munich airport was detained at a station in Zurich: around his waist, he had a boa weighing over 3 kilos!
This didn't turn out to be an isolated incident. Last January, dozens of reptiles were confiscated from smugglers who had placed them in their hand luggage. Among these were three types of boa and two Madagascan tortoises.
In one case, eleven baby boas were born during captivity. Their valve was believed to be around 250 thousand marks. The reptiles were then transferred to Zurich airport and sent on to Tananarive, accompanied by a repressentative from the German office of TRAFFIC EUROPE ( Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce ).
Animal preservationists and environmentalists wish to end the smuggling. They have put protecting rare species second on their list of priorities: top of the list is the aim to put a stop to the destruction of animal habitats. The illegal trading of endangered species or their skins, directly leads to the killing or capture of 4 million birds, 5 million reptiles, 50,000 monkeys and over 350 million tropical fish, not to mention the massive trade in ivory and attrocities that occur. The Washington Convention (CITES) forbids the trading of endangered animals. For this reason, their campaign slogan has been : "Anything to declare?", and their logo a dead elephant without its tusks.