"Reformed" Jaguar Poacher Flees Police Into Pantanal - Poaching Clients Busted W. 100s Of Hunt Pics

[hatrack]

Twenty years ago Brazil’s most notorious jaguar hunter, Teodoro Antonio Melo Neto, also known as “Tonho da onça” or “Jaguar Tony,” swore off poaching after logging 600 kills. The foe turned ally of the jaguar then convinced environmental and research institutes, such as the non-governmental organization Instituto Pró-Carnívoros, of his about face and to employ his tracking skills for conservation. Thus began years of assisting these agencies find the animals so that they could monitor their movements and research their habits. His dramatic change of heart even became the subject of a children’s book titled Tonho da onça, which related a conservation message. But on July 20, 2010, “Jaguar Tony,” now 71 years old, revealed his true spots when federal agents arrested him along with seven others preparing for another in a long series of illegal hunts.

The Brazilian Federal Police and Brazil’s Environment Agency (the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Natural Resources or IBAMA) first became suspicious of Jaguar Tony’s duplicity following reports of missing radio-collared jaguars that had been part of a research project. Evidence of jaguar carcasses on farms in the Pantanal reinforced their qualms and, in October 2009, they launched a joint investigation, code-named Operation Jaguar, that culminated in the 9:00 am raid on a farm in Nova Santa Helena, a small town over 600 km north of Cuiabá in the Sinop region of Mato Grosso state. Led by the Brazilian Federal Police, 60 officers executed arrest and search warrants across seven municipalities in three Brazilian states (Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso du Sul and Paraná). They timed their bust to stop yet one more kill.

When agents arrived on the Pantanal farm, Jaguar Tony, his son Moraes Marco Antonio de Melo, and the organizer of the safaris, dentist and university professor (at Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná) Elisha Augustus Sicoli, along with five foreign clients (four Argentines and one Paraguayan), were gearing up to depart on another illegal trek. Jaguar Tony fled (and is believed to be hiding on a farm in the Pantanal) but police arrested the others. They also seized a vast array of weapons and ammunition from Sicoli that, according to the Chief of the Brazilian Federal Police in Cascavel, Paraná, was larger than the police’s own arsenal. During searches of the homes of Sicoli and two other alleged gang members, Célio Neri Prediger (in Corbel) and Humberto Fiori Filho (in Miranda), police also found hundreds of photographs documenting jaguar, elephant and rhino kills that now will provide important evidence against the defendants.

EDIT

The scheme itself was straightforward. Sicoli, in collaboration with several others, served as the front man to organize illicit sport hunting safaris in Brazil (for spotted and black jaguars and pumas in the Pantanal in Mato Grosso do Sul and Mato Grosso or Iguaçu National Park in Paraná) and Africa (for elephant ivory). He also supplied equipment, namely the weapons appropriate for the desired prey—lower caliber to avoid damage to the Brazilian cat pelts and higher caliber to stop the elephants, rhinos and hippos targeted in Africa. The gang had several “branches”—in the cities of Cascavel, Corbel and Curitiba in Paraná; in Corumbá, Miranda and Bodoquena in Mato Grosso do Sul; and Rondonópolis and Sinop in Mato Grosso—and flew clients into the Pantanal farms or other locales via private planes. In Brazil, Jaguar Tony and his son served as guides. The skilled father-son team used specially trained hunting dogs to track and encircle the jaguars or force them to the top of trees, where they became easy targets. Hunters then photographed their conquests and had the choice of either destroying the carcasses or making them into trophies. Another member of the gang, Fernando Chiavenato, provided these taxidermy services. (Chiavenato initially fled arrest in Curitiba but turned himself in a few days later.)

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2010/1004-neme_jaguars.html

[pscot]

1. Tie a porkchop around the bastard's neck

and stake him out in jaguar country.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[Nihil]

3. Nope - just flay him and exhibit his "pelt".

Same goes for the others involved in providing or buying such "services".
:grr: