Woman pleads guilty to trying to smuggle 29 turtles across a Vermont lake into Canada by kayak

Yes, indeed.  As seen on the AP.

turtles

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — A woman from China pleaded guilty on Friday to attempting to smuggle 29 eastern box turtles, a protected species, across a Vermont lake into Canada by kayak.

Wan Yee Ng, 41, was arrested on the morning of June 28 at an Airbnb in Canaan as she was about to get into an inflatable kayak with a duffle bag on Lake Wallace, according to a Border Patrol agent’s affidavit filed in federal court.

Agents had been notified by Royal Canadian Mounted Police that two other people, including a man who was believed to be her husband, had started to paddle an inflatable watercraft from the Canadian side of the lake toward the United States, according to court documents.

The agents searched her heavy duffle bag and found 29 live eastern box turtles individually wrapped in socks, the affidavit states. Eastern box turtles are known to be sold on the Chinese black market for $1,000 each, the affidavit stated.

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There's more, but you get the idea.

Our intellectual property you can plunder without impediment, but there ain't no way you're getting our box turtles!!!!

I assume there must be an aphrodisiac made from ground up turtle shells if you can't get hold of some rhino horns.

Very few of the confiscated turtles can be returned to the wild. Even though Eastern box turtles are all over the place, you can't introduce "strangers" to a random area because of the possibility of spreading diseases to the local turtles. They're trying to build a DNA database to help with the problem.