Brazilian
authorities have arrested a gang of illegal poachers, including a dentist who
is accused of killing more than 1,000 jaguars.
Police
arrested seven men in the state of Acre on suspicion of having illegally killed
thousands of endangered species, including jaguars, capybara, collared peccary
and red brocket deer.
According to
reports, the most active and longest-serving member of the gang was Temistocles
Barbosa Freire, a dentist believed to have killed thousands of jaguars since
1987.
The jaguar,
which is classified as vulnerable in Brazil, has undergone a loss of nearly 38
per cent of its habitat in the country and has undergone major declines in
population in all regions, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society
(WCS).
The three
largest threats to jaguars in the Amazon are: clearance of native ecosystems in
which they live; the direct killing of jaguars because of real or perceived
conflicts with people; and hunting of the prey that jaguar need to survive.
In this
case, the jaguars themselves were being hunted by the gang, whose conversations
were reportedly hacked by Brazilian authorities, who also monitored their
movements for at least three months before making any arrests.
Police
wiretapped and monitored the group’s mobile phones, and collected photos and
videos in which the accused had recorded the animals being killed,
non-governmental organisation Oeco reports, as per the MailOnline.
The
organisation states that in just three months of monitoring, there were 11
incidents of poaching during which 13 capybaras, 10 hounds, eight jaguars, and
two dead deer were killed by the group.
The poachers
are believed to have used the sound of a high-pitched Brazilian friction drum,
the cuica, to attract the jaguars.
Seven men
were arrested following the investigation, with the Federal Court opening
criminal cases of illegal hunting and the use of a firearm without a permit
against all the men.
Among the
other members of the gang was a doctor, Doria de Lucena Júnior; a server of the
Judiciary, Sinézio Adriano de Oliveira; a farmer, Gilvan Souza Nunes; and an
electrician, Gisleno José Oliveira de Araújo Sá Alves de Oliveira.
Dentist
accused of killing jaguars
The
professions of the other three men - Sebastião Júnior de Oliveira Costa,
Reginaldo Ribeiro da Silva and Gersildo dos Santos Araújo - were not specified.
Each member
of the gang could face fines or prison sentences for their part in the
killings, depending on their levels of participation in each of the crimes
committed.
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