Annals of Warsaw University of Life Sciences – SGGW. Animal ...

46 T. Kaleta, A. Szymańska
upon post-USSR republics in which legislation
of wildlife trade is often poorly
enforced. These republics are exporters
and re-exporters of many animals and
animal products highly prized in the
West. Therefore, Poland may be seen
also as transit country on the route of
legal and illicit trade in animals.
Although Poland signed CITES in
1989, the real participation in trade control
based on Convention begun ten years
later (Trusiński, 2009). Thus, the good
starting point of any analysis of custom
service work concerning transported animals
should be this year.
In this study we concerned ourselves
with the number and type of confiscation
of live animals executed in Poland
by custom service in concordance with
EU law and CITES. The reason of preference
of live animals over animal products
is the fact of growing popularity of
pet animals (specially exotic species). It
has been recorded already in 20th century
(Serpell, 1996), and has caused many
problems. For example exotic pet trade
is often based on taking animals from
the wild which is harmful for nature conservation
(Fitzgerald, 1989). It should
be noted that EU law imposed ban on
the trade in many live animals devoid
of proper documentation. For example
this is the case of monkeys and apes,
parrots and parakeets, tortoises crocodilians,
some amphibians and invertebrates
(tarantulas, leeches etc) (EU Wildlife
Trade Regulation, 1996).
MATERIAL AND METHOD
The data concerning confiscation of
individuals from wildlife species in
Poland during the 1998–2008 period was
provided by the Department of Custom
Service in Polish Ministry of Finances.
The reason of confiscation was usually
lack of special documentation needed
for species covered by CITES and EU
law. This database covered cases of
confiscations recorded at the frontier
points and at the Custom Office province
headquarters (in Poland custom service
is decentralized). Some data concerned
also confiscation in home market. Place,
date, confiscated species, number of individuals,
source country and target country
(in the case of transit) were recorded in
each case. Only records with full description
were selected to further analysis.
RESULTS
Table 1 focuses on place where the animals
were confiscated. The confiscations
took place at 16 points. They were located
either at the frontier (e.g. Cieszyn) or at
Custom Office province headquarter
(e.g. Wrocław, Cracow). Some confiscations
also took place in Okęcie Airport
in Warsaw and during controls in central
part of the country. Confiscated animals
arrived from 19 countries (import), in 8
cases Poland was source country (export)
and in two cases there was transit.
In the studied period Cieszyn and
Przemyśl turned out to be frontier posts
where the greater number of smuggling
acts was foiled. This fact is in accordance
with the visible trend of direction of trade
in animals leading to the Polish territory.
As a whole the greater number of confiscations
imported animals was noted
at places geographically connected with
the eastern and southern border (Tab. 1).
In fact, as further analysis showed the
import from Czech Republic accounted