A Kenyan court on Wednesday ordered a \u200cChinese man to pay a fine of 1 million shillings ($7,746) and gave him a 12-month jail term for trying to smuggle live ants out of the country.<\/p>\n
The \u200bmagistrate in the case said a stiff sentence was needed \u200bas a deterrent given a spate of cases in Kenya \u2060of ant-trafficking.<\/p>\n
It serves markets, such as China, where enthusiasts have paid \u200blarge sums to maintain ant colonies in large transparent vessels known as \u200bformicariums that allow them to study the species’ complex social structures and behaviours.<\/p>\n
Chinese national Zhang Kequn was\u00a0arrested last month\u00a0at Nairobi’s main international airport with more than \u200b2,200 live garden ants in his luggage.<\/p>\n
Zhang’s lawyer said he would \u200bappeal against his sentence.<\/p>\n
He initially pleaded not guilty to charges including dealing in live \u200cwildlife \u2060species but later changed his plea to guilty.<\/p>\n
“Noting the increasing and rising cases of dealing in large quantities of garden ants and the negative ecological side effects of massive harvesting, there is a need for \u200ba stiff deterrent,” \u200bmagistrate Irene Gichobi \u2060said.<\/p>\n
A Kenyan man, Charles Mwangi, was also\u00a0charged\u00a0in the case, accused of supplying the ants to Zhang.<\/p>\n
Mwangi has \u200bpleaded not guilty and is out on bail. His \u200bcase \u2060was not before the court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Last year four men were\u00a0fined\u00a01 million shillings each for trying to traffic thousands of ants. Wildlife experts said \u2060at \u200bthe time that the case signalled a \u200bshift in biopiracy from trophies like elephant ivory to lesser-known species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Kenyan court on Wednesday ordered a \u200cChinese man to pay a fine of 1 million shillings ($7,746) and gave him a 12-month jail term for trying to smuggle live ants out of the country. The \u200bmagistrate in the case said a stiff sentence was needed \u200bas a deterrent given a spate of cases in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,1129,34],"tags":[396,111],"class_list":["post-20517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","category-society","tag-china","tag-kenya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20519,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20517\/revisions\/20519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}