{"id":29351,"date":"2025-05-09T05:24:01","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T09:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=29351"},"modified":"2025-05-09T05:24:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T09:24:01","slug":"gang-who-smuggled-thousands-of-queen-ants-sentenced-in-kenya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2025\/05\/09\/gang-who-smuggled-thousands-of-queen-ants-sentenced-in-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"Gang who smuggled thousands of queen ants sentenced in Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Kenyan court has sentenced four men to one year in prison or pay a fine of $7,700 (\u00a35,800) for trying to smuggle thousands of live queen ants out of the country.<\/b><\/p>\n

The four suspects \u2013 two Belgians, a Vietnamese and a Kenyan \u2013 were arrested last month with live ants suspected to have been destined for collectors in Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n

They had pleaded guilty to the charges, with the Belgians telling the court that they were collecting the highly sought-after ants as a hobby and didn’t think it was illegal.<\/p>\n

But delivering the sentence on Wednesday, the judge said the particular species of ants collected was valuable and they had thousands of them \u2014 not just a few.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“While collecting a few ants might be considered a hobby, being found with 5,000 queen ants is beyond a hobby,” said Magistrate Njeri Thuku.<\/p>\n

“Already the world has lost a number of species due in part to greed. It is time to stem this tide.”<\/p>\n

She added: “This court will do what it can to protect all creatures great and small.”<\/p>\n

The contraband included giant African harvester ants, which are valued by some UK dealers at up to \u00a3170 ($220) each.<\/p>\n

Belgian nationals Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19, Vietnamese national Duh Hung Nguyen and Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a, were handed similar terms after the magistrate considered their mitigation arguments.<\/p>\n

The Belgians were found with 5,000 ants while the other two were found with more than 300 ants in their apartments.<\/p>\n

The ants were packed in more than 2,000 test tubes filled with cotton wool to help them survive for months, authorities said.<\/p>\n

The Belgian teens had entered Kenya on a tourist visa and were staying in Naivasha, a town popular with tourists for its animal parks and lakes.<\/p>\n

Nguyen, 23, was described by the court as a “mule or courier” as he was just sent to pick up the ants and the person who sent him paid for his ticket.<\/p>\n

The court said Ng’ang’a, 26, acted as a “broker” due to his knowledge of the ants that are found in his rural home.<\/p>\n

While sentencing Nguyen and Ng’ang’a, Ms Thuku said they were involved in what she described as “illegal wildlife trade and possibly bio-piracy”.<\/p>\n

David, an ant enthusiast with 10 colonies of ants at home in Belgium, belongs to a Facebook group called “Ant Gang”, the court heard.<\/p>\n

The Belgian teen, who first visited Kenya five years ago, said he had bought 2,500 queen ants for $200 when he was arrested looking for more.<\/p>\n

While pleading for leniency, David told the court he did not know his actions, which he regretted, were illegal.<\/p>\n

For his part, Lodewijckx said he had only offered to buy the ants for his entomology interest but his intention was not to traffic them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The ants were packed in more than 2,000 test tubes filled with cotton wool (Image: Reuters)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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The court ordered the three foreigners to be repatriated to their country of origin upon payment of the fine or completion of the prison term.<\/p>\n

The men have 14 days to appeal against the ruling.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) hailed the ruling as a “testament to Kenya’s zero-tolerance stance on wildlife trafficking”.<\/p>\n

It also highlighted the ecological importance of the giant African harvester ants, noting that their removal from the ecosystem could disrupt soil health and biodiversity.<\/p>\n

The agency said the case sent a clear message that Kenya would “relentlessly pursue and prosecute anyone involved in the illegal wildlife trade, regardless of the species involved”.<\/p>\n

“Traffickers often underestimate the ecological value of smaller species, but their role in our ecosystems is irreplaceable,” it added.<\/p>\n

The KWS, which is more used to protecting larger creatures, such as lions and elephants, had earlier described this as a “landmark case”, warning that the demand for rare insect species was growing.<\/p>\n

In Kenya, the ants are protected by international bio-diversity treaties and their trade is highly regulated.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Kenyan court has sentenced four men to one year in prison or pay a fine of $7,700 (\u00a35,800) for trying to smuggle thousands of live queen ants out of the country. The four suspects […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[1160,11264,1108],"class_list":{"0":"post-29351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-kenya","10":"tag-naivasha","11":"tag-smuggling","12":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29353,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29351\/revisions\/29353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}