Arrested in Sri Lanka Father and son have to pay 170,000 francs for insects

Two Italians, father and son, are arrested in Sri Lanka and sentenced to pay a fine of 170,000 Swiss francs. And all because of insects.

An Italian father and his son have been fined 60 million Sri Lankan rupees (200,000 dollars or around 170,000 Swiss francs) for attempting to smuggle hundreds of endemic insects - including 92 species of butterfly - out of a safari park.

Rangers at Yala National Park arrested Luigi Ferrari, 68, and his 28-year-old son Mattia on May 8 this year, as bbc writes. The men had caught the insects with animal attractants and wanted to chemically preserve them with wax bags, according to the investigation.

At the beginning of September, they were convicted of illegally collecting, possessing and transporting the insects and received the highest fine for wildlife crime in the country to date.

One of the park rangers, K. Sujeewa Nishantha, told BBC Sinhala that on the day of the incident, a driver of a safari jeep had informed his team of rangers that a "suspicious car" was parked on the road. He had also observed that the two men had entered the forest with insect nets.

The Italians face imprisonment

The rangers found the car and discovered hundreds of jars full of insects in the trunk. "All the insects were dead when we found them. They put a chemical in the bottles," said Mr. Nishantha. "There were more than three hundred animals."

The men were initially charged with 810 counts, but these were later reduced to 304. But there is more to come: they face two years in prison if they do not pay the fine by September 24.

According to Italian news reports, the men were on vacation in Sri Lanka at the time and have been detained in the country since the incident.

Friends ask for leniency

Yala National Park in the south-east of the country is one of Sri Lanka's most popular wildlife parks and is home to large numbers of leopards, elephants and buffalo, among others. Luigi Ferrari, an orthopaedic surgeon who specializes in the treatment of foot and ankle injuries, has been described by his friends as an insect lover, it is said.

He is also a member of an entomological association in Modena, a city in northern Italy. His friends and colleagues in Italy have asked for leniency for him. Some said the butterflies found in his possession had no commercial value, the Italian daily newspaper "Corriere della Sera" reported. Dr. Jagath Gunawardena, an expert in environmental law, said the $200,000 fine was a warning to criminals and a good precedent.