Three of the birds saved at the International Centre for Birds of Prey (ICBP) in Newent are ‘endangered’ Cape vultures, and delighted staff now hope to be able to breed from them to reintroduce their offspring to the wild.
The drama started on June 26 last year, when the centre received a call from Border Force officers at Heathrow Airport that a smuggler had been caught arriving from Johannesburg with 19 rare birds eggs worth up to £100,000 strapped to his body.
Bird curator Holly Cale and operations manager Adam Bloch rushed to Heathrow with incubators and brooders to try and save the birds, and found that two had already hatched by the time they arrived.
And nearly eight months later, after unstinting care and nurturing, the centre has reopened after its winter break by unveiling its 17 healthy new additions.
Egg smuggler Jeffrey Lendrum, a 57-year-old ‘SAS-trained wildlife hunter’, was jailed last month for 37 months following a court case where ICBP director Jemima Parry-Jones appeared as an expert witness.
Snaresbrook Crown Court heard last month that Lendrum sparked suspicion when he arrived at Heathrow wearing a heavy jacket in very warm conditions.
A search revealed that underneath he was wearing a body belt concealing 19 protected bird eggs, which Border Force specialist officers identified as protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Lendrum, who has previous convictions for similar offences in Canada, Brazil and Africa, claimed it was his intention to rescue the eggs after he saw men chopping down trees containing their nests.
But he changed his plea in court to guilty to attempting to import the eggs after experts stated that some of them were from birds that nest in cliffs.
Lendrum was jailed for 18 months in 2010 after he was stopped at Birmingham Airport trying to smuggle 14 eggs taken from peregrine falcon nests in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales.
In October 2015, Lendrum was jailed for four and a half years in Sao Paolo, Brazil, after he was found carrying rare albino falcon eggs worth up to £64,000.
He fled Brazil while on bail and may face an extradition request after serving his sentence in the UK.
Source: The Forest Review
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