The bird was accepted in the Rescue Center on 28 July 2011 in a good condition. For the present the baby bird is eating normally, but unfortunately, it is completely imprinted /tamed/ and won’t be able to survive alone in the wild.
As the press-service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has announced, the 50 years old man was arrested after a house search. In his apartment were found indisputable evidences that this person has been practicing illegal trade for years. For us the person who was caught by the police on 27 July 2011 is a man who has traded out of the country hundreds of raptors of protected species. He has been doing this for years and, probably, because of his activity the last specimen of some extremely rare birds has extinguished from the country.
During the search in the apartment of the arrested person were found forged certificates for export of birds and a seal of the Ministry of Environment and Waters and Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management of Austria. This, according to us, has a direct relation to another case, which is being delayed in the court for already one year and four months. In the previous case this same person was caught at the Border Control Point at Vidin Ferry with 2 specimens of Bonelli´s Eagle (Hieraaetus fasciatus). The birds had forged accompanying documents.
Besides that, in the last few months in the Rescue Center of Green Balkans were sheltered other rare birds that were either lost or purposefully let out in Sofia – one Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) in front of the National Palace of Culture, an Eleonora's Falcon (Falco eleonorae) and a Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), found in a garbage can together with two other birds, which were already dead. The garbage can was close to the apartment of the arrested man. In a similar case, a Saker Falcon (Falco cherrug) was seen in several places in the capital, but could not be caught. All the birds were marked with forged rings, similar to those of the Bonelli´s Eagles, which were caught in March 2010 in Vidin.
The current case is extremely interesting and emblematic for the trade with protected species, which regarding the profit in a world scale is on the third place after the trade with guns and drugs.
This time we are appealing to the police and the prosecutor’s office to impose the maximum accusation to the suspect, taking into consideration all the links between the two cases. Unfortunately the practices so far in Bulgaria show that the crimes against wildlife are put on the last place after all other problems of the human society. In the current case, though, as a member country of the EU, Bulgaria must give a sign to the world that it has the will and desire to change the hitherto existing practice of undervaluation of the problem.
We hope that with the existing indisputable evidences and using the full capacity of the current legislation, the arrested person will be given the deserved effective sentence and will be send to jail, after 25 years of committing crimes against hundreds of specimen of protected species and mockery towards the Bulgarian State.
We thank to the colleagues from the Regional Inspectorate of the Ministry of Environment and Waters in Sofia and the policemen at the Economic Police Department of the General Directorate “Criminal Police”, for their adequate reaction and thorough work.
Ivailo Klisurov – Manager
Wildlife Rescue Center of Green Balkans
Mobile phone: 0886 57 00 52, Е-mail: iklisurov@greenbalkans.org
Liubomila Krivoshieva – Rehabilitation therapist of wild animals
Wildlife Rescue Center of Green Balkans
Mobile phone: 0885 22 84 86, Е-mail: lkrivoshieva@greenbalkans-wrbc.org
