Two Belgian teens caught in Kenya with 5,000 ants were given a stark ultimatum: pay a $7,700 fine or serve a year behind bars, the minimum sentence under the country’s conservation laws.
Officials said the insects were intended for black market trade in Europe and Asia, part of a growing shift toward trafficking lesser-known species.
Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19, were arrested on April 5 at a guesthouse in Nakuru county, an area rich in protected wildlife zones after authorities discovered their unusual cargo. Formal charges followed ten days later.
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Magistrate Njeri Thuku, presiding at the court near Nairobi’s main airport, according to an AP report, ruled Wednesday that the defendants’ claims of innocent collecting didn’t match the facts. The ants they gathered were not ordinary, and the sheer quantity indicated something far beyond a casual pastime.
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According to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), the species in question included messor cephalotes, a striking red harvester ant native to East Africa and increasingly sought after abroad.
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“This is beyond a hobby. Indeed, there is a biting shortage of messor cepholates online,” Thuku stated.
Defense attorney Halima Nyakinyua called the court’s decision “fair” and confirmed that the ruling would not be challenged.
“When the statutes prescribe a specific minimum amount, the court cannot go lower than that. So, even if we went to the court of appeal, the court is not going to revise that,” she said.
KWS condemned the illegal export, warning that such acts not only threaten Kenya’s control over its biological wealth but also rob local communities and scientists of possible ecological and economic gains.
In a related incident, two other men, one Kenyan and one Vietnamese, were each fined $7,700 or faced the same 12-month prison term after being found with 400 ants.
Duh Hung Nguyen, the Vietnamese national, told the court he had flown into Kenya to collect the ants, meeting a contact, Dennis Ng’ang’a, at the airport before proceeding to purchase them from local sellers.
Ng’ang’a claimed ignorance of the law, saying ants were commonly traded and consumed within Kenya.
But Thuku saw their encounter differently, calling it “part of an elaborate scheme.”
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Kenyan conservationists have recently flagged the rise in illegal collection of lesser-known species such as ants.
Shadrack Muya, an entomologist at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, emphasized the ecological value of ants, noting their role in soil health, seed dispersal, and ecosystem balance.
“Ants play a very important role in the environment and their disturbance, which is also their removal, will lead to disruption of the ecosystem,” he said.
Muya also stressed that ants forcibly relocated from their native environments rarely survive without careful adaptation support.
“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.
