At Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, Customs agents have seized nearly 400 skulls from protected monkey species over seven months previous year, Customs officials at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris said.
France’s capital’s largest airport’s customs agents said on Thursday that they stopped 392 posted packages from May to December 2022 having primate skulls mainly from Cameroon and destined for recipients in the United States.
The airport’s customs said that the agents also seized hundreds of more packages with bones or skulls from other species. None of the items seized contained any legal authorizations for the sale of protected species.
“Trafficking in protected species is one of the most lucrative trades after drugs, weapons, and people trafficking,” Gilbert Beltran, airport customs chief told reporters as he showed hundreds of skulls, jaws, and horns from protected species.
Beltran said that this “sordid” business makes 8 billion to 20 billion euros ($8.5bn to $21.3bn) per year.
The skulls were likely destined for collectors and hunting clubs in the US, where the skulls are presented as gifts or prizes, according to news reports.
Some of the packages also included whole animals or forearms with hands.
Customs officials of the French Airport first became aware of the monkey skull trade in May 2022 when they found seven skulls that had been posted from Africa.
They heightened their probe and discovered dozens more, mostly from the cercopithecoid family, which contains macaques, baboons, and mandrills, and from chimpanzees.
Fabrice Gayet, a customs expert in animal trafficking, said that the primates are normally hunted down for meat. “The sale of the skulls is a follow-on business,” he said.
Gayet added that the skulls fetch 30 to 50 euros ($32 to $53) each, bigger ones 400 to 500 euros ($426 to $532), and chimpanzee skulls up to 1,000 euros ($1,065).
The skulls will be given to the Museum of Natural History in Aix-en-Provence in southern France for scientific evaluation.
Sabrina Krief, the museum’s ape expert Professor said, “I am shocked to consider that our nearest relatives, apes and great apes, are being destroyed and rainforests stolen of their endangered biodiversity for a business that is as stupid as it is outrageous.”
