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You can buy decorations for Halloween bats – plush, plastic or neon – at Target. Or you could spend $ 50 on a real dead bat from any number of Etsy, Facebook or eBay sellers.
These spooky specimens are available all year round, mounted as weird but strangely cute wall hangings, hanging inside lanterns and even fashioned into macabre hair clips. They come bent and hung upside down, in the vampire manner, or wings spread.
Bats are just one of a subset of a vast market of unusual objects decorating trendy bars and celebrated at curio shows in cities across the country. But federal officials say they are more and more concerned about dead bats, as they seem to be gaining popularity, especially around Halloween.
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service, whose inspectors control imports into the largest international mail facility in the world, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, says it seized illegal shipments of bald – dead moths once or twice a month take off in 2015. This figure doubles in late summer and in the fall leading up to Halloween, said Naimah Aziz, inspector of fisheries and the wildlife at JFK.
"I think the quirk trade is more important than what we've achieved," Aziz said. "The only figures reflected in our information system, which we know, are those that are prohibited. It's just a drop in the bucket. . . probably 3% of what is actually happening in the United States. "
The bats sent are of different species and they are not much bigger than mobile phones, which means that their boxes are light, she said. They are usually sent by post from Indonesia, a method increasingly used to smuggle living creatures, especially the highly sought-after species of scorpions and centipedes that can withstand a trip in a box.
The problem with bats is usually not that they are in danger, she said. Aside from flying foxes, most species are not protected by international wildlife treaties or US laws. But banned shipments are generally mislabeled and have no import-export license, Aziz said. The discovery of a box of bats in a mail bag then usually starts inspectors in a quest to identify the species and, if not protected, locate the importer for the documents to be sorted.
"We have an expedition of about 100 bats on our referring table," said Aziz. The inspectors "are waiting for a gentleman to get a license and declare the species".
There is also another problem: the threat of a deadly disease. All bat shipments are also referred to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which require an additional import permit for bats. The CDC says it regulates incoming bats as they are potential reservoirs of infectious diseases, including rabies and Ebola.
It requires dead bats to be "properly treated" to make them safe, either with high heat or with formaldehyde or another approved method.
Viruses such as rabies and Ebola "can not survive very long outside the host, but can survive longer in a dead animal," said Brian Amman, ecologist of the CDC's viral special pathogens branch. , in an email. "It's unlikely that a virus like Ebola will be transmitted through an imported bat carcass, even a small chance with a life-threatening disease makes too much of it."
How are dead bats dying? It's not clear, said Aziz; The cause of death is not necessary, even for legally imported bats – about 9,000 of them arrive in the United States each year, according to a Newsweek survey that quotes federal figures.
Many online sellers tout their stuffed bats as "ethically and sustainably sourced," and some say they are trapped in nets by farmers whose crops are damaged. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the global conflict between humans and bats concerns crops and many bats are being killed in Indonesia, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
But the organization says that animals actually play an important ecological role in pollinating and dispersing plants.
"The way they're preserved, it's beyond my head, how they're caught, they're not broken down, they're pretty much taken and probably treated," Aziz said of shipments found at JFK, whose number, she added, the alarm. "The amount I see, it must have an impact on the species."
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