The Taipei Customs Office’s express cargo inspections team has seized a shipment of protected reptiles.
The shipment included two critically endangered ploughshare tortoises, the office said, adding that the species is the most valuable tortoise in the world, with the pair valued at up to NT$2.4 million (US$77,295).
The shipment also included 21 Assam roofed turtles, which is classified as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the office said.
Photo: Tony Yao, Taipei Times
The office at 2:30pm on Thursday received an express cargo shipment from Malaysia labeled as tropical fish, it said.
The team opened the packages after noticing a discrepancy in documentation for the shipment and found 53 reptiles, it said.
The office consulted National Pingtung University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Wildlife Conservation, which said that 26 of the animals in the shipment were endangered.
Photo: Tony Yao, Taipei Times
The shipment included three young crocodiles, but two of them had died in transit, the office said.
There were also 27 red-eared slider turtles, it said, adding that the combined value of the 53 animals was estimated at more than NT$5 million.
Customs officials said they would charge the intended recipient, surnamed Lin (林), with contravening the Foreign Trade Act (貿易法) and the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法).
Separately, customs officials on May 17 discovered three ploughshare tortoises in the check-in luggage of a traveler from Malaysia.
The largest of the three tortoises recovered in May was 41cm long and valued at NT$1.27 million, the office said, adding that the other two recovered with it were 26cm and 24cm long.
The two discovered on Thursday were 40cm and 41cm long, the office added.
Only about 400 ploughshare tortoises are believed to remain in the wild and they can only be found in a small area in Madagascar, the university said.
However, up to six eggs can be laid by a single female in captivity, it said, adding that about 6,000 of either sex are in the hands of private owners worldwide.
Their value is measured in centimeters, with each centimeter valued at about US$1,000, it said, adding that the average length of an adult male is 41.48cm.
Private collectors are advised to check whether animals are listed as endangered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora before importing them, the office said.
Failure to do so could result in a breach of Article 40 of the Wildlife Conservation Act, potentially resulting in a prison term of six months to five years and a fine of NT$300,000 to NT$1.5 million, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching