QUITO — Three
people were sentenced by an
Ecuadoran court Friday to a year in prison for
trafficking 84 giant tortoises and five golden iguanas from the Galapagos, a
fragile ecosystem registered as a Natural World Heritage site.
اضافة اعلان
The defendants pleaded guilty and were also
fined $29,000, the national prosecutor's office said in a statement.
The trio were arrested in June when the
Ecuadoran Navy boarded the boat in which they were traveling and found five
bags filled with the golden land iguanas and nine boxes containing the San
Cristobal giant tortoises, seven of which were dead.
The animals were being "transferred
from the Galapagos to be traded in Guayaquil," the prosecutor's office
said.
It said a golden iguana (Conolophus
subcristatus) can sell for up to $20,000 on the black market, while the
tortoises — of the endangered Chelonoidis chathamensis species — can sell for
up to $5,000 each.
Located nearly 1,000km off the coast of
Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands are a biosphere reserve and home to unique flora
and fauna.
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