Three hundred parrots bound for the Bahamas were seized at the Douala International Airport after a routine check of officers of the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) while customs procedures were virtually completed.
The smugglers, who had carefully put the parrots in ten cages, had in their manifest, declared that this was foodstuff to supply African caterers in Europe.
“When we opened the first box, we realized that there were parrots, all alive and carefully lined up,” a forestry and water protection officer disclosed.
”The following controls enabled us to discover the jackpot, while the smugglers were disappearing in the nature, leaving behind their booty”, he added.
The discovery of some documentation enabled the police and MINFOF officers to realize that the parrots were intended for the Bahamas and that it was an organized smuggling network.
The regional delegate of the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife in the Littoral said that 300 parrots “all in good condition”, were carried to specialized services of the ministry in Limbe (south-west).
According to corroborating sources, the trafficking of parrots is very developed in Cameroon as “a lucrative niche” sponsored mostly by Westerners, but also Africans living in Europe who sometimes pay up to 100,000 CFA francs to buy a single parrot.
Source African Press Agency
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