Two Ukrainian women were arrested by Brazil’s Federal Traffic Police (PRF) as they tried to leave Brazil with six eggs of the Lear’s macaw, a critically endangered bird. The women were caught showing excessive nervousness when they were stopped during a routine action on the road near the town of Governador Valadares in the interior of Minas Gerais state.
One of the agents, Edson Alexandre da Silva, who later spoke to the press, found the foreigners’ behavior strange and escalated the questions, further increasing their discomfort. When he approached the back door of the car, suspicious, the nervousness of the women, one 44 years old, the other 47 years old, increased even more, and agents decided to search the car.
Suspicions were quickly confirmed: in the back seat of a car of Ukrainian citizens, agents found a portable greenhouse in a thermal bag, and inside the greenhouse – six bird eggs. Lyra’s macaws have their natural habitat in one area of Caatinga in the state of Bahia, in northeastern Brazil, a state neighboring Minas Gerais, and are one of the critically endangered species worldwide.
According to what both women agreed to say, they were going to try to leave Brazil across the border with Suriname, in the far north of the country, in a long but more careful journey by car, and from that country they would fly to Europe, where the eggs of the Blue Macaws were sold. One of them, when taken to the police station, where the action had to be recorded in writing, destroyed five eggs, managing to save only the sixth.
Authorities believe the two women obtained the rare bird’s eggs from a conservation area in the interior of Bahia, one of the few regions where they can still be seen. The investigation will find out how the Ukrainian women received these eggs and, as can be seen from everything, who helped them, since without the complicity of a person who knows the region, it would have been difficult for them to do this.
Author: Domingos Grilo Serrinha This correspondent in Brazil
Source: CM Jornal
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