Canadian Wildlife Poacher Sentenced to 106 Days in Jail - After 13 Prior Convictions
A man in Toronto with 13 prior wildlife crime convictions will serve time after being busted with “a plethora” of poached wildlife.
In a “precedent-setting” sentence, The Star has reported that Toronto-based Pak Sun Chung has been sentenced to 106 days plus an additional nine months in jail for two federal offenses under the Species at Risk Act. The judge also banned him from hunting or fishing in Ontario.
Repeat offender Chung was found this time with what is described as “a plethora of wildlife, alive, dead, and quartered.” He also reportedly has $27,000 in fines related to the 13 prior convictions. Chung was previously arrested twice for the same turtle poaching crime in less than six weeks during 2007.
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Wildlife authorities found Chung to be in possession of two protected species: 26 Blanding’s turtles (Emydoidea blandingii) and a spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata). In addition, they found bullfrogs, snapping turtles, and “three-quarters of a deer.”
An enforcement specialist with the Ministry of Natural Resources, David Critchlow, said that Chung is “well known” to the agency. He also noted in the article that
Snapping turtles are used for meals. I personally have never heard of eating the other types of turtles, but there’s a lot of things that I’ve never heard of eating that other people have heard of eating. Obviously, dead deer is not for the pet trade – most likely for himself or for the restaurant trade.
Ernie Cooper, who works for the World Wildlife Fund in Vancouver on animal trafficking issues, said
Anybody that is involved in wildlife conservation and enforcement wants to see maximum sentences for poachers and wildlife hunters, because we understand the danger of these activities. But it all goes through the same judicial system that deals with assaults and drug crimes. It’s not unusual for a judge to consider a wildlife case to be less significant.
More sentencing is (hopefully) on the way: This verdict reportedly covered only the charges following Chung’s 2007 arrest.
Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/benimoto/ / CC BY 2.0
I couldn’t help doing a double take on the content of this article. Being from Canada, I am used to reading about poaching problems in Africa, India, etc. It is sad and not a little startling to realize that such activities are so easily transferred to anywhere in the world by short-sighted, profit driven motives. I also realize how easy it is for unscrupulous people to carry on their trade. We think of the African transvelde as vast. Knowing the Canadian woodlands and even areas in and around cities, I realize just how incredibly difficult it is to catch these people and stop them. It would be virtually impossible to monitor the practice with any number of paroling officers. High cost intelligence agents, are not really going to be very effective either. We recently ate in a chinese restaurant in San Francisco, where shark fin soup was on the menu. After all the years of public education on this! We wrote to the owners, setting out the environmental dangers inherent in the continued practices which keep such dishes on the menu and asked them to consider removing it. I somehow doubt our letter will change the menu, but hopefully others could be encouraged to do the same thing. Only a huge push to educate people and create peer pressure in every day life can reduce the reasons for poaching and destruction of the food chain. We have lived in Mexico as well and were witness to the proud service of sea turtle tacos by a very wealthy businessman. Nowhere else we stayed and no-one else we met served this dish. Sadly, there seems always to be a certain number of people who are willing to pay enough money to make illegal poaching a profitable and therefore unstoppable business. I really don’t know what the answer is. There are so many people involved in trying to bring reason and balance to the earth. I pray they manage to succeed over those who do not honor the life that sustains us.
Sad that this happened so close to home, but good that the guy was caught.
From the author:
There is now an update on Chung’s sentencing -
“Pak Sun Chung, who pleaded guilty in a Chatham courtroom on Thursday, was also convicted of violating a court order prohibiting him from engaging in any activities relating to the capture and possession of reptiles, amphibians and fish for 15 years.”