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 News from Around the Americas | June 2005 
Wildlife Smuggling On U.S.-Mexican Border Ranks 2nd Behind Drugs
 Associated Press
| | Border Patrol seized two rare white tiger cubs. |
Brownsville, Texas - It's not just drugs and people being smuggled across the U.S. border with Mexico.
A global trade in endangered wildlife has put animal smuggling right behind illegal drugs, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Officials also said many of the animals are smuggled from the United States into Mexico, sometimes for drug kingpins' private zoos.
U.S. Wildlife Inspector Ed Marshall said he's pretty much seen it all, from exotic birds given Valium or tequila to keep them quiet, to wildcats stashed in trunks.
Someone once smuggled an elephant across the border.
And last week, the Border Patrol seized two rare white tiger cubs that were in a pickup on their way to Mexico.
Seized animals that are now part of the zoo in Brownsville, Texas, include mantled howling monkeys, pygmy marmosets, Amazon parrots, a leopard and a pair of lions discovered during a pot bust and named, Mario and Juana. |
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