Inside a suitcase and hidden in photographic rolls, the Bogotá authorities found 130 poisonous frogs that were traveling in the hands of a Brazilian citizen heading to Sao Paulo from the airport in the Colombian capital.
The cocoi or harlequin frogs (oophaga histrionica) came from the town of Junín, Nariño “and the citizen claimed that they had been given as a gift by a local community,” explains the Secretary of the Environment of Bogotá, Adriana Soto.
According to Soto, the foreigner was traveling from Bogotá to the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, making a stopover in the capital of Panama. The police report that the woman has been arrested for the crime of wildlife trafficking.
Harlequin frogs are poisonous, measure less than five centimeters and inhabit the humid forests of the Pacific, between Ecuador and Colombia, as well as other countries in Central and South America.
Colombia is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world and suffers from the trafficking of species, especially amphibians, small mammals and some marine animals such as sharks.
