Feds charge 8 with smuggling endangered monkeys into U.S., including Cambodian official said to have been heading to conference on protecting endangered species
CBSN
Miami — Federal prosecutors have charged eight people with smuggling endangered monkeys, including a Cambodian wildlife official who was arrested in the U.S. while traveling to a conference on protecting endangered species.
The official, plus a colleague in that country's wildlife agency and six people connected to a Hong Kong-based company were involved with breeding long-tailed macaques for scientific and academic research and supplying them to labs in Florida and Texas. But the group is accused of illegally purchasing wild macaques for the business when they lacked supply from their breeding operations.
Long-tailed macaques, sometimes known as crab-eating macaques, are protected under international trade law and special permits are required to import the animals into the U.S.
Two more black-footed ferrets have been cloned from the genes used for the first clone of an endangered species in the U.S., bringing to three the number of slinky predators genetically identical to one of the last such animals found in the wild, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday.
There were 56 wild, endangered Puerto Rican parrots living around El Yunque National Forest before Hurricane Maria in 2017. After the storm, there was only one survivor. Wood thrushes, found across the eastern U.S.; 60% of them are gone. Baltimore orioles, also an eastern bird; two-fifths have been lost. Western meadowlarks, prevalent in the central and western U.S.; three-fourths have disappeared.