China comes down hard on pangolin smugglers

BEIJING, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Two men in China's southeastern city of Xiamen have been given suspended death sentences for smuggling pangolins and other exotic animals into the country, state media reported on Thursday.

Pangolins, nocturnal scaly anteaters which spend most of their days curled up in a ball asleep, are in great demand in China where their meat is considered a delicacy and their scales believed to hold medicinal properties.

From October 2005 to April 2006, a gang smuggled 17 containers of pangolin meat and scales worth 23.4 million yuan ($3.2 million) into China, Xinhua news agency said.

Two gang leaders were sentenced to death, suspended for two years. Three others were jailed for life.

In China, a suspended death sentence is usually commuted to life imprisonment on good behaviour.

In summer 2006, customs officials became suspicious of a container which was found to hold 2,849 frozen pangolins and 2,600 large geckos originating from Malaysia together worth 6 million yuan ($825,000).

China has stepped up efforts in recent years to stamp out a domestic wildlife trade and educate people about the environmental perils of stripping forests of their native flora and fauna.

But the appetite for exotica remains and partly as a result of the crackdown, the trade has intensified beyond China's borders.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom, editing by Nick Macfie and Sanjeev Miglani)

($1=7.271 Yuan)