Two Belgian teenagers found with 5,000 ants have been fined $7,700 (€6,775) or the option of serving 12 months in prison by a court in Kenya for violating wildlife conservation laws.
The teenagers were found with the ants, which authorities said 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 5 April with 5,000 ants at a guest house.
They were charged on 15 April with violating wildlife conservation laws.
Magistrate Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court in Nairobi’s main airport, said in her ruling that despite the teenagers telling the court they were just having fun, the particular species is valuable and they had thousands of them.
The teens had entered the country on a tourist visa and were staying in a guest house in the western town of Naivasha, popular among tourists for its animal parks and lakes.
Their lawyer, Halima Nyakinyua Magairo, said that her clients did not know what they were doing was illegal.
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) had said the case represented “a shift in trafficking trends — from iconic large mammals to lesser-known yet ecologically critical species.”
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, Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a and Vietnamese Duh Hung Nguyen were charged after they were found in possession of 400 ants in their apartment in the capital, Nairobi.
KWS had said all four suspects were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia and that the species included messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large and red-coloured harvester ant native to East Africa.
The ants are bought by people who keep them as pets and observe them in their colonies.
Several websites in Europe have listed different species of ants for sale at varied prices.
The 5,400 ants found with the four men were valued at 1.2 million Kenyan shillings (€8,104), according to KWS.
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