EU launches unprecedented crackdown on wildlife trafficking

BRUSSELS -- In February 2014, Portuguese airport security agents seized two shipments of endangered glass eels totaling 272kg and worth roughly 400,000 euros from an aircraft on its way to mainland China. Less than a year later in January 2015, authorities in Bulgaria found 37kg of the same type of eels inside the luggage of two Chinese citizens arriving from Spain at the airport in Sofia. Then in May 2015, another seizure was recorded, this time at France's Roissy Airport outside Paris. Inside the container was 136.6kg of raw ivory destined for Vietnam.