Wildlife Smugglers Employ Tricks of International Drug Traffickers : Environment: Many rare birds die in transit, investigators say. Australia’s exotic creatures provide rich pickings for the black market.

Lizards smuggled in socks, drugged birds stuffed into plastic tubes or hidden in clothing, eggs concealed in tennis balls--today’s illegal traders in wildlife employ all the ingenuity of the drug smuggler.

New Zealand customs officials last April found 10 eggs of an endangered species strapped under a woman’s breasts.

In October three Americans tried to smuggle more than 70 rare bird eggs, two cockatoos and a lizard out of Australia by concealing them in modified underwear.

“We’re no longer fighting the individual amateur operator, it’s now run by people whose sole business is smuggling wildlife,” according to Paul Jewell, chief intelligence officer of the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service (ANPWS).

Jewell drew a parallel with international drug trafficking, citing the increasing use of couriers who take the risks for the big-time criminals behind a racket which experts believe could be worth more than a billion dollars a year.

“We caught a courier, a German, some time ago, and after serving a year’s jail here he was later arrested doing the same thing in New Zealand,” Jewell said.

Australia, with its host of exotic birds, provides rich pickings for the lucrative black market in the United States and Europe.

In Belgium, one of the biggest centers for the illegal wildlife trade, a pair of helmeted cockatoos can fetch more than $20,000.

A professional courier intercepted at Sydney airport had 26 Australian parrots in his baggage, including some rare Major Mitchell cockatoos, which had a conservative overseas value of $250,000, according to the ANPWS.

A report by Traffic Oceania, a World Wildlife Fund fauna trade policing agency, found that Australian parrots were among the most popular cage birds in all the countries it covers.

Traffic Oceania found that American demand for Australian parrots is increasing and that egg smuggling is also on the rise.

Demand for rare or endangered birds such as the Major Mitchell, gang gang or black cockatoo, has created concern among wildlife experts over their long-term survival.

“There is no doubt that the regular taking of eggs is going to have a long-term impact,” Jewell said.

Smugglers often return to the same nesting sites every year to take eggs or young. Already the destruction of some black cockatoo nesting sites “is having a significant impact on the species as a whole,” the ANPWS said in a report.

Customs officials were unable to say exactly what percentage of birds die in illegal transit, but unofficial estimates say the death rate from suffocation could be as high as 80%. Drugged birds can also wake up in suitcases and attack and kill each other out of sheer terror.

The ANPWS cited a recent example in which only four of 12 palm cockatoos--each worth about $13,000 on the international market--survived after they were found by a customs agent in Austria in a hidden compartment of a crate containing a legal shipment of parrots from Australia.

The smugglers, not surprisingly, do not seek out common birds such as the sulphur-crested cockatoo or the galah.

Maximum profits are made by obtaining the more rare species.

“The main market remains the U.S. because that is where the money is,” according to Jewell.

But animals also make their way from Australia to private zoos or aviaries in many countries in Western Europe.

The assault on Australia’s fauna has prompted the government to hit back with tougher penalties for smugglers, stepped-up cooperation with overseas agencies fighting the trade and the creation of a new wildlife protection squad.

The unit will boost Jewell’s team from two to nine and is aimed at developing an effective national and international wildlife intelligence network.

Even before the announcement of the new squad, the customs and wildlife agencies claimed some success in smashing smuggling operations in cooperation with other countries.

In January customs officers raided premises across the country to break a major ring operating in New Zealand, Australia and United States after a three-year investigation involving all three countries.

In the Australian state of Victoria, another ring was broken which customs officers said had been in existence for more than five years.

The gang had detailed maps of breeding grounds in national parks and was believed responsible for stealing and smuggling bird eggs worth millions of dollars every year.