Belgian teens found with 5,000 ants in Kenya given two options for their punishment

Two Belgian teenagers found with 5,000 ants in Kenya were given a choice of paying a fine of $7,700 or serving 12 months in prison — the minimum penalty for the offense — for violating wildlife conservation laws.Authorities said the ants were destined for European and Asian markets in an emerging trend of trafficking lesser-known wildlife species.Belgian nationals Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19 years old, were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house in Nakuru county, which is home to various national parks.They were charged on April 15.Magistrate Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court in Kenya’s main airport on Wednesday, said in her ruling that despite the teenagers telling the court they were naïve and collecting the ants as a hobby, the particular species of ants they collected is valuable and they had thousands of them — not just a few.The Kenya Wildlife Service had said the teenagers were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia, and that the species included messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large and red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.“This is beyond a hobby.

Indeed, there is a biting shortage of messor cepholates online,” Thuku said in her ruling.The teenagers’ lawyer, Halima Nyakinyua, described the sentencing as “fair” and said her clients would not appeal.“When the statutes prescribe a specific minimum amount, the court cannot go lower than that.So, even if we went to the court of appeal, the court is not going to revise that,” she said.The illegal export of the ants “not only undermines Kenya’s sovereign rights over its biodiversity but also deprives local communities and research institutions of potential ecological and economic benefits,” KWS said in a statement.In a separate but related case, two other men charged after they were found with 400 ants were also fined $7,700 each with an option of serving 12 months in prison.Duh Hung Nguyen, a Vietnamese national, tol...