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What was the skin of a polar bear doing being displayed in a store in the city of Cali, in Colombia? This is the question that both authorities and environmentalists are asking themselves, after it became known that the Environmental Police Group and Natural Resources of the Cali Metropolitan Police together with the Administrative Department of Environmental Management (Dagma), seized a skin of this iconic mammal in a shop in the Centenario neighborhood, in Comuna 2.
The complaint reached the authorities due to a citizen complaint last Thursday, April 18, the mayor and head of the Environmental Police of the Cali Metropolitan Police, David Fernando Rendón Victoria, explains to América Futura. “The same day the complaint was received, the request was attended to and the skin was, indeed, displayed at the entrance of the place,” he says. Suspicioning that it was not a real polar bear skin, the Dagma verified it and confirmed that it did correspond to that exotic species.
In Cali, they captured this guy who was trying to sell the skin of a polar bear.
Wildlife trafficking is a crime. It is time to punish these traffickers with exemplary sentences, who continue to cause irreparable damage and suffering to wildlife.… pic.twitter.com/3lRSihys8N
— ALTO Platform (@PlataformaALTO) April 21, 2024
The man who intended to sell the skin was captured, prosecuted and will be investigated by the prosecutor's office for wildlife trafficking. Meanwhile, the skin – explains Rendón – remains in the hands of the Dagma to be used as an evidentiary element.
How did you get to Cali?
What remains doubtful is how the skin of a polar bear arrived in Colombia, in Cali, a city that, by the way, will host the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity (COP16) in October of this year. The issue, for now, remains a mystery. The man who was captured, Rendón adds, told them that he did not have that information, since the owner of the business where they were selling the skin was his mother, who died a few months ago. “So it is unknown how he entered the country, but what is known is that he came from Bogotá.”
As leader of the environmental branch of the Police, Rendón comments that he has seized several animals, live and dead. Ferrets, African hedgehogs and even sharks. But, at least, in Cali, he had never had to confiscate the skin or part of a body of an animal of that size, and whose natural habitat resonates so far from the tropical country.
“Wildlife trafficking, whether live animals or parts of dead animals, is a crime classified in Colombia, and can generate financial fines and even prison,” he recalls. In fact, the Environmental Crimes Law penalizes wildlife trafficking with between 60 and 135 months in prison, and fines between 300 and 40,000 minimum monthly salaries.
In Cali alone and, so far in 2024, the group led by Rendón has already seized or rescued 131 wild animals, including parrots, turtles, boas, macaws and up to eight kilograms of stingray and shark meat, a peculiar list which now adds the skin of a polar bear. At the national level, during 2023, the Directorate of Protection and Special Services of the National Police reported that, in total, it seized 12,404 individuals of fauna in the country.
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