Shellshocked: Undercover cops nab reptile traffickers after 2-year sting operation

An undercover investigation into poaching and illegal sales of New York's native turtles, snakes and salamanders has led to charges against 25 people, with more arrests to come, state environmental officials said on Thursday.

Eighteen people were charged by New York state officials, six by Pennsylvania authorites, and one under Canadian law.

The investigation also prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to pursue federal charges against a Maryland meat processor for buying hundreds of illegally trapped New York snapping turtles, and against a Louisiana turtle farm operator for buying thousands of New York snapping turtle hatchlings for export to China, officials said.

Those charges are being filed under the Lacey Act, which regulates international trade in wildlife. The companies, which have not yet been formally charged, were not identified Thursday.

In "Operation Shellshock," investigators spent hundreds of hours afield with poachers, trolled Internet sales sites and chat rooms, and posed as vendors at herpetological shows in New York and Pennsylvania beginning in 2007.

The illegal trafficking included dozens of endangered Massasauga rattlesnakes hidden in the door panels of a minivan and smuggled from Canada in exchange for timber rattlesnakes, a threatened species in New York. Canadian agencies have brought 20 charges against that man, with possible penalties of more than a million dollars in fines and two years in jail, officials said.

More than 2,400 individual animals were involved in documented crimes, with state Department of Environmental Conservation officers holding nearly 400 as evidence. Many, including the endangered Massasaugas, will be returned to where they were taken.

New York has one of the strictest laws in the country protecting its reptiles and amphibians from being bought and sold. A law enacted in 2006 bans all commercial trade in the state's native reptiles and amphibians. That includes not only wild-caught animals, but native species such as spotted and wood turtles that are captive-bred in another state and shipped to buyers in New York.

In one case, a company in Florida faces felony charges for selling captive-bred wood, spotted, and Blandings turtles over the Internet to undercover investigators in New York. A woman who answered the phone at the company, Turtlesale.com in Port Richey, said Thursday that the company had "no comment at this time."

State environmental police started a preliminary investigation of illegal wildlife trafficking in 2006 after noting numerous complaints from people who witnessed poaching. In one case, a group of spotted turtles being monitored by University of Buffalo researchers vanished from a western New York marsh.

The undercover operation was launched after the investigation uncovered extensive wildlife trafficking. It turned out that reptiles captured in the wilds of upstate New York were being sold both domestically and overseas as pets or meat.

In addition to rattlesnakes, animals confiscated included venomous copperheads, Eastern hognose snakes, snapping turtles, box turtles, Blandings turtles, wood turtles, spotted salamanders, and two yellow-spotted Amazon River turtles, an internationally protected endangered species.

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On the Net: www.dec.ny.gov