France: Paris airport customs Charles de Gaulle confiscates hundreds of monkey skulls

9/21/2023, 5:44:47 PM

Highlights: More than 1,000 monkey skulls have been handed over to customs in Paris. The skulls were meant to be given to people in Cameroon. Some of the skulls were intended to be used for scientific research. The rest were to be donated to a local charity or given to a children's charity. The government has not yet decided whether to take any of the monkey skulls back to the U.S. for further study or to give them to the local community for use in the future. The monkeys are expected to be returned to their home countries.

Paris airport customs have handed over more than 700 confiscated monkey and animal skulls to a natural history museum. Most of the packages with prohibited content came from Cameroon and were supposed to go to the United States.

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Douane française / dpa

Customs at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport have seized hundreds of skulls of protected monkey species. The skulls of the monkeys and other animals were mostly in packages from Cameroon, customs said. The recipients were collectors and hunting clubs in the USA who used the skulls as gifts or prizes. Some of the packages also contained whole specimens or forearms with hands, which were destroyed for health reasons. None of the postal items had been subject to a permit required under species protection.

In addition to monkeys, other species such as otters, big cats, monitor lizards or birds of prey would also be smuggled, customs said. Almost every day, customs officers made corresponding discoveries at France's largest airport.

More than 700 monkey and animal skulls seized between May and December 2022 have now been handed over by customs to the Natural History Museum in Aix-en-Provence, which intends to examine and exhibit them. "I am stunned to imagine that our closest relatives, monkeys and apes, are decimated and the rainforests are robbed of their endangered biodiversity for a business that is as stupid as it is outrageous," said the museum's monkey expert, Sabrina Krief.

svs/AFP