On Sunday, Spain’s Civil Guard revealed that it was investigating a businessman in the eastern Valencia province who had a private taxidermy collection with over 1,000 stuffed animals, including slightly 400 endangered species and at least one example of a long-extinct North African oryx.
According to a Civil Guard statement, the collection would sell for 29 million euros (USD31.5 million) on the illicit market, and its possessor might face charges of trafficking and other environmental offences. It was said that the find was the greatest collection of protected stuffed creatures ever discovered in Spain.
The stuffed animals were found in two warehouses covering 50,000 square metres on the borders of Bétera, a tiny town north of Valencia on the eastern coast. There were 405 specimens protected by the CITES treaty on wildlife conservation among the 1,090 stuffed creatures discovered.
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The scimitar oryx, also known as the Sahara oryx, was declared extinct in the wild by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2000, and at least two other species were on the verge of extinction: the addax, or white antelope, which originated in the Sahara desert, and the Bengal tiger. Among the stuffed animals found were cheetahs, leopards, lions, lynx, polar bears, snow panthers, and white rhinoceros, as well as 198 big ivory tusks from elephants.
The Civil Guard stated that it will look into if any paperwork exists to support the collection ownership.
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