A Smuggled Pedigree

[Windycity]

There has been a thread on the arachnid world discussion list over the last week or so concerning the recent arrest of Marc Baumgarten in Brazil for attempting to smuggle tarantulas out of the country. While not openly condoned, it was noted that many commonly available species here in the US and Europe such as A. geniculata, N. coloratovillosum, L. cristata, N. vulpina, A brocklehursti, B. baumgarteni, are available in the hobby as a direct result of Baumgarten’s smuggling activity.

I’m curious as to how many other tarantulas widely available today had their humble origins in a smugglers rucksack. Anyone have any information or interesting anecdotes?

 

[Lopez]

Hi
I believe the entire European population of P. irminia came from three smuggled adults out of Venezuela. One of the Poecilotheria species, possibly rufilata? all came from a smuggled batch of 10 or so too. You can add to that most animals taken from Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela etc from the last few years.
The P metallica, while not strictly "smuggled" were never meant to leave India either.

I've not had any time to check my notes regarding any of the above information, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

 

[Kayv]

wow some interesting stuff

 

[Buspirone]

I've seen reference to this story in a couple places but can't seem to catch a link to any news story or pics. I currently have trouble accessing Arachnid_world(for some reason my membership was canceled and my request to re-join has been pending for about 3 days now). I read somewhere that when his shipment was stopped it was intentionally held before opening to make the "evidence" more gruesome in the pictures(which I have not seen). Everthing I have found is second hand info or discussions of people damning the guy for smuggling and then getting called a hypocrite by others because they have Ts in their collections that are only available in the hobby because of this person and his smuggling operation. Anybody have any links to the story or the photos that I've read about??

 

[Weapon-X]

re

think about some of the people who are complaining about P. metallica, but i'm sure if they cost only a 100.00 instead of the 400.00 they would'nt complain so much would they?

 

[Code Monkey]

This is a one of those very blurry areas for the hobby. Smugglers of livestock are chasing the almighty dollar and the welfare of the animals is only of concern in so much that dead livestock = no almighty dollar. Yet, as is pointed out, think about just how much of the hobby favorites wouldn't be available without them, or for that matter, how little new stuff will come into the hobby without them.

Major centers for invertebrates are shut off to legal export and more are going to follow suit in the coming years - it's fine to deforest your nation, but selling off the renewable living resources is politically incorrect in much of the international arena. Once closed, there's little reason to expect them to re-open since such policies keep the tree-hugging western nations happy even though they do nothing to conserve inverts that are under attack from loss of habitat and intentional eradication far more than the pet trade.

For the most part, my attitude is that people condemning the smugglers are hypocrites if they have species that entered the hobby illegally. Smugglers are a normal part of civilization, a reaction to governments that would rather totally prohibit something than spend the time to make a rational policy (and then waste money and time pursuing people doing the natural thing: finding a way to circumvent the ban). For instance, I've seen Marc (and other smugglers) condemened because he would take all the Ts he could from an area, well, no duh. He's funding the operation all himself and he can't very well be traipsing over the whole of Brazil with a truck full inverts while he collects in "responsible" manner. Blaming smugglers for the nature of how they must collect and ship is like blaming the cocaine cartels for the violence surrounding a prohibition created market that lets them sell $1 worth of crude plant extract for 25X that amount.

OTOH, Marc was not just another smuggler. The way he was able to be so successful at finding new and exciting species wasn't that he was a top spider sleuth, but that he would steal people's unpublished research into newly discovered species. With that ill-gained information, he would fly to the locale they were found and then pay the local children to help him with gathering as many as possible. These actions at the very least stole the thunder from a hard working and underpaid naturalist ready to reveal a new species to the world but also risked stealing months or even years of their work if one of the taxonomy whores like Tesmoignt were to scoop up one of these 'unidentified imports' and describe it first. That sort of unethical behavior goes beyond simply smuggling inverts for money and significantly alters the issues surrounding Marc.

 

[Ultimate Instar]

I don't have a problem with smugglers if they are only taking a very small fraction of the wild population. I posted a question on Arachnid_World about P. metallica populations and Hendriks answered. Going by what he said, he took seven specimens out of (my conservative estimate) several hundred thousand wild P. metallicas. Taking a small number of Ts is unlikely to significantly impact the survival of a species, especially considering the very hostile and short-sighted attitude of Indian officials to Western scientists and meaningful conservation efforts. If anything, taking more than seven specimens for a sustaining captive population would be more ethical, albeit not completely legal.
JMHO,
Karen N.

 

[Charlie]

?

Very well put Code, I agree with you totally.


Imagine that.....


-Charlie

 

[vulpina]

Another great answer CM!!!! WTG!!

Andy