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(ANSA) – RIMINI, NOVEMBER 18 – Rare and endangered plants imported and sold illegally, in particular desert cacti from Chile and the United States, the collector denounced as a trafficker by the Carabinieri Forestali of the Carabinieri Cites de Ancona Nucleus. With the support of the Carabinieri Forestales of the Morciano di Romagna station in the Rimini area, Cites soldiers seized 171 cacti belonging to endangered species uprooted from the deserts of Chile, Mexico and the United States and illegally held in greenhouses by Rimini’s collector-dealer.
The seizure was ordered by the Public Ministry of Ancona, as part of the “Atacama” operation, aimed at combating the illicit traffic of cacti protected by CITES (Washington Convention on the protection of animal and plant species in danger of extinction) and considered at very high risk of extinction. Already last February, at the beginning of the investigation activities, another 930 plants had been seized against a marchesano, resident in Senigallia, illegally uprooted during 7 trips to Chile and Argentina, and illegally imported -to evade controls- through the system of sending “postal packages” in the European Union.
According to the Forestale, the two suspects, Rimini and Marche, had business ties with some twenty customers and retailers, ten foreign collectors and nine Italians, for a turnover of at least one million euros. Many plants, belonging to very rare varieties, collected in the Atacama desert in Chile (from which the operation takes its name), were exported through resellers resident in Asian countries, including Japan; others were sold or bought in Europe to be relaunched on the illegal market. The protected cactus tour dates back to the 2029 arrest of a US citizen for trading certain species from Arizona. All the plants seized during the “Atacama” operation were entrusted to the Botanical Garden of the University of Milan. (HANDLE).
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