Eight of the ten lemurs stolen from the Upie zoo (Drôme), on the night of Sunday 22 to Monday 23 August, were found alive by the gendarmes. Two men were arrested and jailed.
Already “known judicially”, the individuals were referred this Tuesday, August 31 to the prosecutor’s office in Valence and were indicted for “aggravated thefts”, the public prosecutor of France told Agence France-Presse (AFP). city, Alex Perrin, confirming information from the regional daily The Dauphiné Libéré.
FOUR ANIMALS STILL MISSING
For the time being, we do not know precisely under what conditions the primates, of the “maki catta” type, were found. Based on information from France Blue, they were in a van, intercepted by the military near Livron-sur-Drôme.
According to the management of Upie Zoo, the animals were probably stolen as part of wildlife trafficking. Besides the other two lemurs, two tamarins, a male and a female who formed a pair, were also abducted that night.
“We are very, very happy. We believed in it without believing it… ”, the zoo manager, Alexandre Liauzu, responded to AFP. However, he added, “we are still very worried about the animals which are still missing”.
The survivors, for their part, “immediately took their bearings in the park”. “One of them, as our veterinarian was able to observe, has a slightly changeable behavior, perhaps due to stress, but this is also normal”, noted Alexandre Liauzu.
The lodges of the animals, where they can take refuge during the night, had been fractured “in a very ‘clean’ way, no doubt by a commando which had targeted” the lemurs and tamarins, according to Christelle Monthulé, responsible for “capacity zoology” of the establishment created in 1976.