(JP)Bird researcher snared over illegal trade flap

January 10, 2002

Bird researcher snared over illegal trade flap

NAGOYA -- A renowned parakeet expert was arrested

Wednesday for selling rare Latin American birds, trade

in which is forbidden under the Washington Treaty,

police said.

The man, Hitoshi Shimura, was arrested for breaking

animal protection laws. As a researcher, Shimura has a

government license to import Scarlet macaws, which is

on the verge of extinction, and other rare species of

the parakeet family, but he illegally sold the birds

to persons who have no such license, police said.

Two of his customers, a Kagawa Prefecture official and

a man from Aichi Prefecture, have already been

arrested.

Police said Shimura, of Tokyo's Suginami-ku, gave two

Scarlet macaws free of charge to an unnamed man from

Tatsuta, Aichi Prefecture, in October last year.

In August 1999, the 47-year-old researcher sold six

rare parakeets to the Tatsuta man and the Kagawa

official for 270,000 yen.

Investigators also discovered that Shimura gained 1.2

million yen by selling four Scarlet macaws in 1998,

but the offense will go unpunished because the statute

of limitation has already expired.

Shimura is the coauthor of a guidebook on how to breed

parakeets.

The number of wild Scarlet macaws is reduced to around

6,000 due to overhunting, officials of World Wide Fund

for Nature Japan said. (Mainichi Shimbun, Jan. 9,

2002)

Send FREE video emails in Mail!

Recommended Posts