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Shadrack Muya, a senior lecturer at Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, said that ants play a crucial role in aerating soils, improving soil fertility and dispersing seeds. He also mentioned that their removal from their natural environment can disrupt the ecosystem.
Muya warned against removing ants from their natural habitats as they are unlikely to survive without proper support and adaptation to their new environment.
“Survival in the new environment will depend on the interventions that are likely to take place. Where it has been taken away from, there is a likelihood of an ecological disaster that may happen due to that disturbance,” he said.
Two Belgian teenagers found with 5,000 ants in Kenya were given a choice of paying a fine of $7,700 or serving 12 months in prison — the minimum penalty for the offense — for violating wildlife conservation laws.
Authorities said the ants were destined for European and Asian markets in an emerging trend of trafficking lesser-known wildlife species.
Belgian nationals Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19 years old, were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house in Nakuru county, which is home to various national parks.
They were charged on April 15.
Magistrate Njeri Thuku, sitting at the court in Kenya’s main airport on Wednesday, said in her ruling that despite the teenagers telling the court they were naïve and collecting the ants as a hobby, the particular species of ants they collected is valuable and they had thousands of them — not just a few.
The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) had said the teenagers were involved in trafficking the ants to markets in Europe and Asia, and that the species included messor cephalotes, a distinctive, large and red-colored harvester ant native to East Africa.
The teenagers’ lawyer, Halima Nyakinyua, described the sentencing as “fair” and said her clients would not appeal.
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Source: http://www.africanews.com/2025/05/08/kenya-expert-warns-of-ecological-disaster-due-to-insect-trafficking/
