A routine for customs officers. At Roissy airport, almost daily seizures are made by agents. This Thursday, customs officers handed over 392 skulls of protected primates intercepted in postal packages in seven months. Mandrills, chimpanzees, red colobus from Cameroon, these skulls, seized between May and December 2022 mainly come from Cameroon and will join the Natural History Museum (MHN) in Aix-en-Provence to be studied. They were intended for the United States for collectors wishing to build cabinets of curiosities or as prizes or gifts for hunting associations.
“Trafficking in protected species is one of the most profitable, behind narcotics, weapons and human beings, with profits between 8 and 20 billion euros each year,” insisted Gilbert Beltran, interregional director of Roissy customs. during an official ceremony at the Roissy customs headquarters, referring to “sordid trafficking”. Behind him, hundreds of skulls stored on a table and in filled bags: the long jaws with the sharp teeth of mandrills, the horns of antelopes, rare birds, all these bones came from the African continent. Some insects escape from the remains of these protected species.
The start of this affair dates back to spring 2022
The genesis of this extraordinary affair dates back to spring 2022: on May 2, Roissy customs officers discovered seven primate skulls in postal packages coming from Africa. During other checks, dozens of primate skulls were found, almost all specimens of the Cercopithecus family as well as a few skulls of chimpanzees and mandrills.
“These primates are first hunted for their meat. The resale of skulls is a traffic of opportunity,” explained Fabrice Gayet, customs sailor and expert in fauna and flora trafficking. According to him, the skulls of small primates are sold for between 30 and 50 euros each, 400 to 500 euros for those of drills and mandrills and between 800 and 1,000 euros for those of chimpanzees.
Critically endangered specimens
Some packages contain entire specimens, heads or forearms with hands of primates, which are destroyed for health reasons. Other species (otters, felines, monitor lizards, birds of prey in particular) are also the subject of trafficking. In total, 718 animal skulls were seized by customs in seven months. Expertise shows that these are primates protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, or the Washington Convention (which regulates international trade in more than 38,000 species). of fauna and flora threatened with extinction). Their circulation is only possible in the presence of specific permits. None of the packages checked presented these authorizations.
Among these primates is notably the red colobus of Cameroon, a species endemic to the country considered in “critical danger of extinction” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the mandrill, a “vulnerable species”, and the drill, “in danger”. “Four hundred skulls seized in barely seven months, this suggests the massacre of primates in these forests which are pillaged to satisfy collectors, while these primates are threatened with extinction,” lamented Sabrina Krief, specialist in large monkeys. Having provided assistance in the identification of specimens from the first seizures, the MHN of Aix-en-Provence very quickly expressed its interest in these pieces in order to enrich its collections and carry out work of iconographic determination and classification. .