JAYAPURA, Indonesia: An
Indonesian man has been arrested for trying to smuggle 2,000 endangered
pig-nosed turtles, police said, marking the latest wildlife-trafficking arrest
as the Southeast Asian nation battles the vast trade.
Authorities in Papua province
said they seized 2,227 of the palm-sized turtles which were stuffed into boxes
on a boat docked in the remote town of Agats.
"Officers saw a port worker
carrying three big boxes and got suspicious," Papua police spokesman Ahmad
Musthofa Kamal said late Thursday (Mar 14).
"This is protected species
and they are not for sale."
Following the discovery, police
arrested another man believed to be involved in the trafficking bid. The port
worker was not detained.
If convicted, the arrested man
could face up to five years in prison and a 100 million rupiah ($7,000) fine,
police said.
It was not clear where the turtle
shipment was headed.
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.
Some turtle species are popular
in China and elsewhere in Asia as food or for use in traditional medicine.
In 2014, Indonesian officials
rescued more than 8,000 baby pig-nosed turtles hidden in suitcases and thought
to be destined for China and Singapore.
This year, smugglers were
arrested in neighboring Malaysia with some 3,300 endangered turtles aboard
their boat.
Indonesia, an archipelago of some
17,000 islands, is home to a kaleidoscope of exotic animals and plants, but the
illegal trade in wildlife is rampant and laws aimed at providing protection are
often poorly enforced.
Numerous endangered species, from
the Sumatran elephant to the Javan rhino, have been driven to the brink of
extinction.
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