Sept. 11, 2006 — Missing marmosets, abducted alligators, purloined penguins: Thieves are targeting Europe's zoos and safari parks to supply animal collectors who want to own ever more exotic species.
Conservationists say the practice is harming animals, threatening vital breeding programs, and adding to an already flourishing illegal trade in exotic birds and animals.
"We live in a designer world and people are not satisfied any more with a budgie or a canary — they want something more exotic," said John Hayward, a former police officer who runs Britain's National Theft Register, the only national database of animal thefts in Europe.
He says on average Britain's zoos have suffered a major theft every week for the past few years, involving dozens of animals worth thousands of dollars.
Conservationists fear the demand for exotic animals will put further pressure on wild populations, which thieves have already targeted for years.
Experts say, for example, that the trade in exotic birds — both legal and illegal — has decimated populations of African gray parrots, prized for their ability to mimic human speech.
Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says 360,000 African grays were legally traded between 1994 and 2003 — most of them into Europe — while many thousands more were illegally traded.
Zoo thefts made headlines last December when Toga the baby jackass penguin was stolen from Amazon World Zoo Park on the Isle of Wight off southern Britain. He was never found.
On June 18, thieves made off with five rare marmosets worth several hundred dollars each from Drusilla's Zoo at East Grinstead, south of London. Police later arrested two men and recovered four of the creatures, along with 14 other monkeys stolen from zoos in Devon and Cambridgeshire.
Hayward said primary targets are smaller monkeys — including South American marmosets, Tamarins from South and Central America and spider monkeys from Mexico and Brazil — as well as large exotic birds like macaws and flamingos and reptiles such as turtles and tortoises.
