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 the pair in Christchurch District Court today 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.
The men had 11 females, nine of which were heavily pregnant.
Defence counsel Simon Graham said the men were expecting $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 told the court that a significant increase in terms of imprisonment and fines were desirable. Both the men were not 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 to 15 weeks' prison earlier this month.
