Three people were sentenced to one year in prison for the trafficking of 84 giant tortoises and five golden iguanas from Galapagos, a fragile ecosystem considered a Natural Heritage of Humanity, the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office reported this Friday.
"The defendants Freddy Alfonso CR, Darío JC and María Petrona S. Ch. accepted their participation in the events and underwent an abbreviated procedure, in which they were sentenced to one year in prison"The Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
They must also pay a $29,000 fine.
The three people were apprehended last June, when the Navy stopped the boat in which they were traveling and found five plastic bags with golden iguanas (of the Conolopus subcristatus family) and nine cardboard boxes with 84 giant land tortoises of the Chelonoides chathamensis species. , of which seven died.
The species "were transferred from Galapagos to be marketed in Guayaquil"added the accusing entity.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the golden iguanas, considered in a vulnerable state, can cost up to 20,000 dollars and the turtles, in danger of extinction, between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars.
The archipelago, located 1,000 km from the Ecuadorian coast, has unique flora and fauna in the world, which served as inspiration for the naturalist english charles darwin for his theory of the evolution of species.
There were originally 15 species of turtles on the islands, three of which became extinct centuries ago, according to the Galapagos National Park. In 2019, a specimen of Chelonoidis phantastica was found on Fernandina Island after more than a hundred years of being considered extinct.
