A 27-year-old Chinese national, Zhang Kequn, has been arrested at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi after being found with 2,238 live queen ants in his luggage. The seizure on Tuesday highlights a growing trend of insect smuggling in Kenya, according to court filings seen by Reuters.
Immigration officials had placed a stop order on Zhang's passport as he had previously evaded arrest in the country last year. Investigators said the ants were packed in test tubes and rolls of soft tissue paper, and that Zhang had been in Kenya for two weeks, mentioning three accomplices who supplied the insects.
The Kenya Wildlife Service told the court it needed more time to investigate, including examining an iPhone and a MacBook recovered from Zhang. The service also noted that a similar consignment of ants originating from Kenya had been seized in Bangkok on the same day, indicating an organised smuggling network.
While ant exports from Kenya are permitted with licenses, the regulations are difficult to navigate. Last year, four men were fined $7,700 each for trafficking thousands of ants, a case that experts said signalled a shift in biopiracy from traditional trophies like ivory to lesser-known but ecologically critical species.
