A Las Vegas man who tried to sneak 115
oven-ready iguanas into the United States from Mexico has been sentenced
to two years in prison for illegally importing the reptiles,
authorities said on Thursday. A federal judge ordered Eliodoro Soria
Fonseca, 38, to serve 24 months in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s office
for the Southern District of California said.
Fonseca was arrested as he tried to
cross into California through the Otay Mesa port of entry, south of San
Diego, last June with the iguana meat packed in coolers. A search found the beheaded, skinned,
and deboned bodies of 115 green iguanas weighing 159 pounds (72 kg)
hidden beneath fish in the coolers.
“According to admissions in his guilty
plea, the defendant imported the iguana meat for the purpose of serving
it as food to humans,” the attorney’s office said in a press release.Green iguanas are eaten in Mexico and
Central America. They are enjoyed in stews or roasted and served in
tacos or flautas, usually with condiments. Some recipes recommend
parboiling the reptiles first.
But iguanas are also regulated by the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). While
they are not endangered, CITES say they may become threatened if trade
is not tightly controlled. Fonseca, who said he obtained the
iguanas in Nayarit in western Mexico, had neither an import license from
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service nor any CITES permit from Mexico’s
wildlife management authority.
According to sentencing documents, a
researcher working for an iguana conservation program in Mexico
concluded that removing more than 100 iguanas from the Nayarit area
essentially “means that the local population was technically wiped out.”
Source: (By Wango Wango) http://horn.so
