HUNTER IS HUNTED: Man faces 25 years in prison for attempting to smuggle rare Urial carcass
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: A Northern California man was arrested last week on charges of planning to violate the Endangered Species Act after he allegedly tried to pass through San Francisco airport customs with eight entire or partial animal corpses in his luggage. Jason Keith Bruce, 49, of Galt, California, is facing up to 25 years in prison after he was arrested for attempting to smuggle numerous expensive carcasses, including an endangered Ladakh urial, using fraudulent government paperwork.
Bruce was indicted alongside 43-year-old Pakistani hunting expert Pir Danish Ali for the alleged crimes following a hunting trip to Pakistan in 2018. If found guilty, both men might face lengthy prison terms and large fines. The Office of Law Enforcement of the US Fish and Wildlife Service later initiated an inquiry, which, according to reports, revealed a massive smuggling network used by Ali's organization to smuggle animal carcasses through airports.
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Bruce paid Ali $50K to kill the Ladakh urial sheep
According to a press release, Bruce paid Ali $50,000 to assist him in killing an endangered long-horned sheep, and then he planned to smuggle the animal's body back to the US by faking official documentation from Pakistan and labeling the carcass as belonging to a different species. It is alleged that at least 25 hunters utilized this strategy to transport more than 97 carcasses into the US between 2013 and 2018.
The Ladakh urial, which is normally found in western central Asia and is classed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, was the focus of Bruce's hunt, and he is now subject to harsh punishments. The population of the sheep has decreased drastically in recent years. According to the indictment documents, Ali allegedly advised Bruce before their hunt that only 180 of the sheep had been logged in the area at the time.
Ali has been in the smuggling business for more than a decade
The Fish and Wildlife Service investigation found that Bruce hired Ali's services as early as 2016 to start planning how to smuggle the animal into the US, suggesting that the big game hunter was apparently drawn to the scarcity of the animal in order to bag an elusive trophy. According to a news release from the Justice Department, Ali, the CEO of a Pakistani hunting outfitter and guide business, agreed to export the Ladakh urial as a trophy through both fraud and bribery. A follow-up investigation into the discovery revealed Ali's extensive network of animal smugglers.