Notorious Indian tiger poachers jailed in landmark conviction

Undercover work funded by UK charity leads to ‘one in a thousand' breakthrough

September 2013. Six notorious tiger poachers have been jailed in Southern India in what is being described as a landmark conviction. The five men and one woman were sentenced to three years each by Karnataka High Court - a sentence made more remarkable by the fact that the conviction rate for tiger poaching in the country is 0.1%.

The gang travelled the country poaching tigers and other wildlife for sale into the international market - tigers would be carved into fur, bones and organs for use as decoration, tonics and medicine.

Caught red handed in Bandupur Tiger Reserve

They were caught red-handed with lethal ‘jaw' traps in the Bandupur Tiger Reserve, and brought to justice by the Karnataka Forest Department with specialist legal assistance from the Care for the Wild-funded Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) Wildlife Crime Enforcement Team.

Care for the Wild CEO Philip Mansbridge said: "This conviction is a landmark for tiger conservation and sends a powerful message of deterrence to wildlife criminals who aim to poach India's tigers. Our partnership with the WTI is instrumental in a huge number of cases per year alongside de-snaring and undercover enforcement activities. The team also work with government forest staff to ensure more arrests lead to convictions, just like this one, in the future."

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German gets jail time for Galapagos iguana smuggling

An Ecuadoran court has sentenced a German tourist to four years in prison for trying to smuggle threatened iguanas out of the Galapagos Islands.

Dirk Bender "will serve four years in prison as stated in the judgment reported today by the president and judges" of the criminal court that found him guilty on January 5 of having altered the local ecosystem of the archipelago, the Galapagos National Park said in a statement Monday.

Bender was arrested at the airport on Baltra Island on July 8 after park officials noticed him carrying a suspicious package, which was found to contain four lizards wrapped in canvas.

The hidden reptiles were Galapagos land iguanas (conolophus subcristatus), which the International Union for Conservation of Nature ranks as "vulnerable" on its Red List of Threatened Species.

The statement said Bender will serve his sentence in a prison in the Ecuadoran port city of Guayaquil since the archipelago does not have such a facility.

Time he has already spent in a provisional detention facility in Puerto Ayora on the island of Santa Cruz will be taken into consideration, according to park authorities.

The Galapagos Islands, situated about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) off Ecuador's coast, gained fame when Darwin visited in 1835 to conduct research that led to his revolutionary theories on evolution.

The archipelago has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978 for the rich plant and animal life found both on land and in the surrounding sea.

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