Posted on 05/28/2019 7:14:18 AM PDT by Red Badger
Canada slapped a traveler with a $15,000 fine after he was caught at the airport with a bizarre, blood-sucking secret in his carry-on luggage, officials said.
Ippolit Bodounov of Niagara Falls, Ontario, had flown from Russia to Canada on Oct. 17, 2018, when agents discovered “a large quantity of live leeches in his carry-on luggage” at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, the country’s environment and climate change agency said in a news release Monday.
“An enforcement officer detained the leeches to identify the species and determine if the import was lawful,” environment officials said.
Lawful it was not: Bodounov pleaded guilty in an Ontario court on Friday to charges that he violated the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act, Canadian officials said. The fine will be put into the country’s Environmental Damages Fund, officials said. He’s also barred from importing and exporting regulated endangered animals for the next year.
Gerry Brunet of the environment agency’s wildlife enforcement division said a border agent dog smelled the trove of leeches — 4,788 of them — which were kept in 10 small, wet cloth bags tucked in a reusable grocery bag, the CBC reports. Canada’s environment agency did not immediately respond to McClatchy’s request for comment on the total number of leeches seized.
Canadian officials said the worldwide illegal wildlife trade is worth as much as $20 billion each year “and threatens many of the world’s most treasured wildlife species.”
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
LOL
From what I’ve read, the medical leeches have to be a specific species. I don’t know why.
But if they are that useful, and expensive, you would think that somebody would ‘farm’ them ...............
Fish bait. Walleye love the things.
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