KARACHI, May 7: Three pairs of ring-tailed lemurs confiscated by customs authorities were shifted to the zoo from the Safari Park late on Monday night, sources said.
The species (Lemur catta) is listed as near-threatened in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List and is an Appendix 1 species on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). It’s the first time that lemurs are on display at the zoo.
Speaking to Dawn, assistant collector customs Mukhtar Ali Shaikh said that the consignment was found abandoned and was seized as an ‘unclaimed baggage’ a few days ago. It had come by a Qatar Airways flight from Doha.
“We waited for two days for any claimant and finally shifted the consignment to the zoo for safekeeping till the issue is settled,” he said, adding that the owner had been identified as Dominik Franik from the tag attached to the baggage.
A show-cause notice, he said, would be issued to the owner once the department determined the actual value of the consignment, its classification in terms of custom duty and import status.
“The monkeys seemed to be rare and are banned items. I don’t think they are found in Pakistan,” he said.
Sharing his side of the story with Dawn, Dominik Franik, a Czech national who brought the consignment to Karachi, said that he had brought it as a ‘gift’ for a breeding programme at a private farm.“I was compelled to abandon my consignment after the customs official demanded $12,000 from me,” he said, insisting that he had a valid CITES export permit for the animals which were first brought to Vienna from Czech Republic and then to Karachi via Doha. He, however, admitted that he did not have an import permit, which was also required in Pakistan.
(Customs officials denied they had demanded any money).
Mr Franik said he was a businessman dealing in IT and zoo gardens. “My mother is an animal dealer and it’s the first time that we brought lemurs to Pakistan. Earlier, we had brought tigers here.”
When asked about the import and export permits, he said that animals raised in captivity were not treated as those that had lived in the wild under the CITES.
“I don’t know about the technical details, but what I could say is that these animals have been raised in captivity at our family farm for commercial purposes,” he said, arguing that if there were any issues, the
consignment would have been withheld before its arrival in Karachi as wildlife laws were strictly enforced in other countries.
He couldn’t, however, give details about the private farm for which he had brought the animals.
According to the CITES, permits are required even if the species is bred in captivity. “However, if a commercial breeder of a CITES Appendix-I species fulfils certain conditions and is registered with the CITES secretariat, specimens from the breeding operation may be treated as if they are of Appendix-II species, meaning that they can be traded commercially (permit requirement is not waived). If the animals were not bred for commercial purposes, they may be traded simply with a certificate of captive breeding.”
Speaking to Dawn, Uzma Khan, director for biodiversity of the World Wide Fund for Nature, said: “All CITES species under any appendix require an import permit under Pakistan’s CITES Act 2012. Any trade violating this act is illegal and the offender could be fined and even jailed.”
Natives to Madagascar, ring-tailed lemurs are one of the most vocal primates. They have several different alarm calls with distinct meanings to alert members of their group to potential danger.