New Delhi: A businessman in the eastern coastal Valencia region of Spain has been found to have more than 1,000 stuffed animals in his private taxidermy collection. Spain’s Civil Guard is conducting a probe as the collection includes over 400 animals from protected species and at least one North African oryx, which is already extinct, news agency AP reported.
The private taxidermy collection owned by the Spaniard would fetch 29 million euros (around Rs 240 crores) on the black market, the report quoted the Civil Guard as saying in a statement issued on Sunday.
They added that the businessman could be charged with trafficking and other crimes against the environment.
According to the report, the finding was the largest collection of protected stuffed specimens in Spain.
The stuffed animals were found in two warehouses spread over 50,000 square metres on the outskirts of the small Bétera town north of Valencia.
There were 1,090 stuffed animals in all, and 405 of them belonged to specimens protected by the CITES convention on wildlife protection, the report said.
These included the scimitar oryx, which is also known as the Sahara oryx. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared it extinct in the wild in 2000. Also found in the collection were at least two more species that are nearly extinct — a Bengal tiger and the addax, or white antelope, which is originally from the Sahara desert.
The investigators also recorded stuffed cheetah, leopard, lion, lynx, polar bear, snow panther and white rhinoceros, among others, besides 198 large ivory tusks from elephants.
Quoting the Civil Guard, the AP report said it would be investigated if the businessman has any document that justifies the ownership of the collection.