LAS VEGAS, N.M. – The Department of Game and Fish and Las Vegas, N.M., area landowners, businesses and residents are offering $3,000 in rewards for information leading to the poachers who killed two bull elk and left them to rot at Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge.
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(Reuters) - A Canadian college student caught at a border checkpoint in August 2014 with 51 live turtles in his pants pleaded guilty to six smuggling charges on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Kai Xu, 27, of Windsor, Ontario, admitted to smuggling or trying to smuggle more than 1,600 turtles of different species out of the United States from April 2014 until his arrest in September 2014. Each of the six counts carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
In August 2014, Xu crossed the U.S.-Canada border into Detroit and was watched by U.S. agents as he picked up a package at a parcel center and appeared to transfer items before heading back to the border, according to a criminal complaint.
When he passed back through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, Xu was stopped by Canadian Border Services, which found and seized 41 live turtles taped to his legs and 10 hidden between his legs, the complaint said.
The day of his arrest, Xu packed more than 1,000 turtles into suitcases that he sent with a runner he had hired to fly them to Shanghai from Detroit, prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge John Corbett O'Meara scheduled sentencing for April 12 in Ann Arbor. Xu has been held in federal custody since his arrest.
(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Michigan Department of Natural Resources conservation officers in southwest Michigan recently conducted enforcement operations targeting illegal importation of harvested deer into Michigan from states with chronic wasting disease (CWD) in their free-ranging deer herds.
Conservation officers conducted operations near the I-94 corridor of the Michigan/Indiana border, resulting in the seizure of six harvested deer. Five deer were transported into Michigan from Illinois, and one was transported from Wisconsin. Michigan law prohibits importing deer from CWD-positive states and provinces.
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The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) rescued a 4-month-old female panther kitten in Collier County earlier this month. The kitten was likely orphaned when her mother was struck and killed by a vehicle on U.S. 41 near Collier-Seminole State Park.
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WHITE LAKE — Dead pheasants were flying from a vehicle cruising down the interstate.
Tossed out the window by a couple of hunters, the birds were over the limit wildlife evidence obtained recently by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department.
For 24 hours from Sunday to Monday afternoon, GF&P and a collection of other agencies conducted a game stop on an Interstate 90 rest area, just east of the White Lake exit.
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