Wildlife smuggler jailed for two years

A wildlife dealer who smuggled the skulls and skins of some of the world's most endangered species was jailed for two years yesterday. Chester Crown Court was told that Dutchman Nicolaas Peters had creatures on the brink of extinction hunted to order in the Philippines.

Peters, 41, traded in dead wildlife from his home in the remote village of Aberhafesp, near Newtown, mid-Wales. He had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to eight charges of importing and exporting endangered species, six of which are listed as under serious threat of extinction, including a Philippine monkey-eating eagle of which just 50 pairs survive.

Customs officials who raided his home last August seized more than 250 carefully labelled skins of birds from all over the Philippines, including 42 individual specimens of 16 protected endangered species.