14 DAY TRIAL // Just a few days ago, the police of Guangxi Zhuang, one of China's autonomous regions, succeeded in keeping smugglers from taking around 3,600 Siamese crocodiles to cities in the southern part of the country, where they would have been killed and served as exotic dishes.
In spite of their being an endangered species, Siamese crocodiles are still considered by some of China's citizens to be a delicacy.
Seeing how restaurants cannot legally purchase such animals in order to kill them and put them on their menus, it is not difficult to guess that an underground market for these reptiles was quickly established.
However, as animal rights activists will be glad to hear, 3,600 representatives of this species have just recently been rescued from the trucks in which they were enclosed by smugglers.
Unfortunately, 42 of them had already died of heat strokes when the police decided to inspect the trucks, but the remaining are expected to soon be released back into the wild, reports Zee News.
Naturally, before being set free, the animals will be carefully inspected by veterinarians to make sure they do not suffer from any significant health issues.
One other source, Care 2, speaks about how several environmental and conservation groups have been struggling for quite long time to put an end to this practice of eating Siamese crocodiles.
Thus, they keep pushing for better border inspections and for keeping an all-attentive eye on what Chinese restaurants have on their official and un-official menus.
Last, but not least, educating Chinese citizens is also likely to help in protecting this species.
From where we stand, it is a good thing that more and more people are striving to safeguard what is left of our planet's biodiversity, especially given the fact that quite a lot of plant and animal species suffer as a result of pollution and climate change.