Indonesia foils illegal Facebook sale of komodo dragons

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JAKARTA, March 27, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Indonesian authorities said Wednesday
they had seized five komodo dragons and dozens of other animals being sold on
Facebook, as the country battles to clamp down on the illegal wildlife trade.

The vast Southeast Asian archipelago nation’s dense tropical rainforests
boast some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world and it has for
years been a key source and transit point for animal trafficking.

Five smugglers, identified only by their initials, were arrested in
Semarang and Surabaya on Java island for allegedly trafficking the komodos —
the world’s biggest lizard — along with bearcats, cockatoos and cassowary
birds.

“The suspect VS sold the komodos online through Facebook,” East Java
police spokesman Frans Barung Mangera said in a statement.

The dragons, which can only be found in their natural habitat on a cluster
of islands in eastern Indonesia, were sold for between 15 and 20 million
rupiah ($1,000-$1,400), Mangera said.

In a separate case, three other people were arrested in East Java over the
alleged online sale of otters, leopard cats and pangolin, Mangera said.

If convicted, the smugglers could face up to five years in prison and a
100-million-rupiah fine.

The haul of komodo dragons comes just a day after authorities seized more
than 5,000 endangered pig-nosed turtles from smugglers in Indonesia’s
easternmost province Papua.

The pig-nosed turtle — which has a distinctive snout-like nose and webbed
feet — is only found in Australia and New Guinea, an island shared between
Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, and is protected under Indonesian
conservation laws.

Indonesia’s illegal trade in wildlife along with habitat loss has driven
numerous endangered species, from the Sumatran elephant to the orangutan, to
the brink of extinction.

Authorities in Bali, a popular holiday island, last week arrested a Russian
tourist who attempted to smuggle a drugged orangutan out of Indonesia in his
suitcase to keep as a pet.