At Oakland's International
Mail Center, Customs officers routinely scrutinize mail from many countries.
Today, Customs Officer Naomi is taking a closer look at a package sent from Kenya.
It’s declared as head lamps, this is the x-ray image of the package
and you can see some inconsistencies there,
so it is really worth opening and having a look.
While these African manufactured head lamps show organic matter
inconsistent with the declaration the packaging itself
appears sound.
According to the Declaration, it is a headlamp
and when I push the button
it actually works.
If it's a genuine concealment, the exporters have gone to some trouble.
So it really looks like it's very legit.
Naomi dismantles the torches, but it's the batteries
that have piqued her interest.
Once in the x-ray machine, Naomi’s sharp
eyes immediately spot a clear inconsistency.
One side is dark, the other side is light.
Naomi and her
colleague Vinodh suit up in the exam room as a precaution,
before cracking open the bogus batteries.
Bingo.
And you can see the white powder here, this is what’s inside,
we are going to test it for what the substance is.
At Auckland International Airport
it’s not unusual for returning Kiwis to bring home all manner of souvenirs.
Some items could carry biosecurity risks, so they’re always checked before
being cleared.
So this passenger came in a couple of days ago,
they had declared on their form
and verbally to us that they had lots of trophy items.
We didn’t know what was and wasn’t CITIES items.
CITES is an agreement among New Zealand and other nations
that protects against exploitation of endangered wild animals.
Department of Conservation rangers
Jason and Avi will check over the large consignment.
This quantity is certainly unusual coming in
with as many trophy mounts and skins in one go.
Particularly without paper work, South Africa is generally
pretty good at issuing paper work.
We do have some CITES items
that we still to have to process here that the importer is unlikely to get back.
Probably Caracal skull
which goes with this skin.
They’re a medium-sized cat, African Savannah.
These needed a permit to come in.
And finally, there’s a series of Hippo teeth.
So this is the same as ivory
so again, needed documentation to get those in the country.
The Rangers set to work on over 20 hunting trophies.
There is a skull for the Brown Hyena and this is the skin from it so
obviously taken in South Africa
but it’s not CITES listed so
the importer can get that back.
With DOC confiscating the CITES items, Biosecurity
can make their final checks on the skulls, skins and teeth.
Lots of them are nice and clean and lots of them aren’t, like the skins
arent, aren’t
tanned they’re just sort of salted and dried and brought through.
And a couple of the skulls are not particularly clean,
as you can see there is still tissue in the nasal cavities on that one.
Snappy, snappy.
We get to pack it all up so it’s nice and safe
and then send it away to the treatment company
so they can treat it so it can be safe to enter the country without bringing any
diseases in it.