Pair 'as guilty as ivory hunters'

Defence lawyer Simon Graham (left) said Thomas Benjamin Price (centre) and Gustavo Eduardo Toledo-Albarran had expected to get $2500 for each of the smuggled geckos. Photo / Simon Baker

Two foreign visitors who tried to smuggle protected geckos out of the country have been jailed for 18 weeks each.

Judge Raoul Neave said the pair were "just as guilty as ivory hunters" when he sentenced them in the Christchurch District Court yesterday for trying to smuggle 16 jewelled geckos, gathered from the Otago Peninsula, for overseas collectors, the Christchurch Court News website reported.

Gustavo Eduardo Toledo-Albarran, a 28-year-old chef from Carranza, Mexico, had earlier admitted hunting the geckos and Thomas Benjamin Price, a 31-year-old stockbroker from Gallen, Switzerland, had admitted possessing them.

The maximum sentence for both charges is six months imprisonment.

The men had captured 11 female geckos, nine of which were pregnant.

Defence lawyer Simon Graham said the men were expecting to make $2500 for each gecko.

Judge Neave said protected wildlife was being endangered by greedy and ruthless people who employed equally cynical predators to do their dirty work.

He said a significant increase in terms of imprisonment and fines was desirable.

Neither man was in a position to pay fines, and both were listed as unemployed.

The pair were arrested after a third man, Manfred Walter Bachmann, a German resident of Uganda, was found with 16 geckos in tubes in his backpack.

He was sentenced this month to 15 weeks in prison.

- NZPA