Hyena Skulls and Suspicious Batteries | To Catch a Smuggler: South Pacific | National Geographic

At Oakland's International Mail Center, Customs officers routinely scrutinize mail from many countries. Today, Customs Officer Naomi is taking a closer look at a package sent from Kenya. It’s declared as head lamps; this is the x-ray image of the package, and you can see some inconsistencies there, so it is really worth opening and having a look.

While these African manufactured head lamps show organic matter inconsistent with the declaration, the packaging itself appears sound. According to the Declaration, it is a headlamp, and when I push the button, it actually works. If it's a genuine concealment, the exporters have gone to some trouble. So, it really looks like it's very legit.

Naomi dismantles the torches, but it's the batteries that have piqued her interest. Once in the x-ray machine, Naomi’s sharp eyes immediately spot a clear inconsistency. One side is dark; the other side is light. Naomi and her colleague Vinodh suit up in the exam room as a precaution before cracking open the bogus batteries. Bingo. And you can see the white powder here; this is what’s inside. We are going to test it for what the substance is.

At Auckland International Airport, it’s not unusual for returning Kiwis to bring home all manner of souvenirs. Some items could carry biosecurity risks, so they’re always checked before being cleared. So, this passenger came in a couple of days ago; they had declared on their form and verbally to us that they had lots of trophy items. We didn’t know what was and wasn’t CITES items.

CITES is an agreement among New Zealand and other nations that protects against the exploitation of endangered wild animals. Department of Conservation rangers Jason and Avi will check over the large consignment. This quantity is certainly unusual coming in with as many trophy mounts and skins in one go, particularly without paperwork. South Africa is generally pretty good at issuing paperwork.

We do have some CITES items that we still have to process here that the importer is unlikely to get back. Probably a Caracal skull, which goes with this skin. They’re a medium-sized cat, African Savannah. These needed a permit to come in. And finally, there’s a series of hippo teeth. So this is the same as ivory, so again, needed documentation to get those in the country.

The Rangers set to work on over 20 hunting trophies. There is a skull for the Brown Hyena, and this is the skin from it, so obviously taken in South Africa, but it’s not CITES listed, so the importer can get that back. With DOC confiscating the CITES items, Biosecurity can make their final checks on the skulls, skins, and teeth.

Lots of them are nice and clean, and lots of them aren’t. Like the skins, aren’t tanned; they’re just sort of salted and dried and brought through. And a couple of the skulls are not particularly clean. As you can see, there is still tissue in the nasal cavities on that one. Snappy, snappy.

We get to pack it all up so it’s nice and safe and then send it away to the treatment company so they can treat it so it can be safe to enter the country without bringing any diseases in it.