Feb 5, 2023 07:57 PM
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180981581/
INTRO: First, a clouded leopard escaped from her habitat. Next, a gash appeared in the langur monkey enclosure. A week later, an endangered vulture mysteriously died. Then, two emperor tamarin monkeys were stolen.
Over the span of just a few weeks, the Dallas Zoo has experienced a string of suspicious events that culminated in the arrest of a suspect Friday morning in connection to the missing monkeys. Police are still investigating whether the man was involved in the other events. Twenty-four-year-old Davion Irvin was charged with six counts of animal cruelty, with more charges possible, per the Dallas Police Department.
“It’s been one gut punch after another,” Harrison Edell, the zoo’s executive vice president for animal care and conservation, tells the New York Times’ J. David Goodman...
[...] Wildlife trafficking is an industry estimated to value between $7.8 billion and $10 billion per year. Poaching and trafficking are major causes for declines in populations of endangered species such as pangolins, tigers and elephants.
Animal theft from zoos is not unheard of. In 2015, 25 members of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria reported animal thefts, wrote the Guardian’s Katharine Gammon four years ago. In 2017, poachers broke into a French zoo and shot, killed and hacked the horn off one of its rhinos. In 2018, a ring-tailed lemur was stolen from the Santa Ana Zoo, and two years later, another was taken from the San Francisco Zoo. Both lemurs were returned safely.
Currently, police are investigating the theft of 12 squirrel monkeys from a zoo in Louisiana. The monkeys were taken on January 28, just two days before Finn and Bella were stolen. As of now, there’s no known connection between the two cases. (MORE - details)
INTRO: First, a clouded leopard escaped from her habitat. Next, a gash appeared in the langur monkey enclosure. A week later, an endangered vulture mysteriously died. Then, two emperor tamarin monkeys were stolen.
Over the span of just a few weeks, the Dallas Zoo has experienced a string of suspicious events that culminated in the arrest of a suspect Friday morning in connection to the missing monkeys. Police are still investigating whether the man was involved in the other events. Twenty-four-year-old Davion Irvin was charged with six counts of animal cruelty, with more charges possible, per the Dallas Police Department.
“It’s been one gut punch after another,” Harrison Edell, the zoo’s executive vice president for animal care and conservation, tells the New York Times’ J. David Goodman...
[...] Wildlife trafficking is an industry estimated to value between $7.8 billion and $10 billion per year. Poaching and trafficking are major causes for declines in populations of endangered species such as pangolins, tigers and elephants.
Animal theft from zoos is not unheard of. In 2015, 25 members of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria reported animal thefts, wrote the Guardian’s Katharine Gammon four years ago. In 2017, poachers broke into a French zoo and shot, killed and hacked the horn off one of its rhinos. In 2018, a ring-tailed lemur was stolen from the Santa Ana Zoo, and two years later, another was taken from the San Francisco Zoo. Both lemurs were returned safely.
Currently, police are investigating the theft of 12 squirrel monkeys from a zoo in Louisiana. The monkeys were taken on January 28, just two days before Finn and Bella were stolen. As of now, there’s no known connection between the two cases. (MORE - details)