The ants are flying in Kenya at the moment.<\/p>\n
During this rainy season, swarms can be seen leaving the thousands of anthills in and around Gilgil, a quiet agricultural town in Kenya\u2019s Rift Valley that has emerged as the centre of a booming illegal trade.<\/p>\n
The mating ritual sees winged males leave the nest to impregnate queens, who also take flight at this time. This makes it the perfect time to chase down queen ants to sell on to smugglers who are at the heart of a growing global black market, that taps into the pet craze for keeping ants in transparent enclosures designed to observe the insects as they busily build a colony.<\/p>\n
It is the giant African harvester ant queens, which are large and coloured red, that are most prized by international ant collectors \u2013 one can fetch up to \u00a3170 ($220) on the black market, which tends to operate online.<\/p>\n
A single fertilised queen is able to create a whole colony and can live for decades \u2013 and can be easily posted as scanners do not tend to detect organic material.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first, I did not even know it was illegal,\u201d a man, who asked not to be named, told the BBC about how he had once acted as a broker, linking foreign buyers with local collection networks.<\/p>\n
Also known as Messor cephalote<\/em>s, these ants are native to East Africa and known for their distinctive seed-gathering behaviour making them popular with ant collectors.<\/p>\n \u201cA friend told me a foreigner was paying good money for queen ants \u2013 the big red ones which are easily seen around here,\u201d the former broker said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou look for the mounds near open fields, usually early morning before the heat. The foreigners never came to the fields themselves \u2013 they would wait in town, in a guest house or a car, and we would bring the ants to them packed in small tubes or syringes they supplied us with.\u201d<\/p>\n The scale of the illicit trade in Kenya became apparent last year when 5,000 giant harvester ant queens \u2013 mainly collected around Gilgil \u2013 were found alive at a guest house in Naivasha, a nearby lakeside town popular with tourists.<\/p>\n The suspects \u2013 from Belgium, Vietnam and Kenya \u2013 had packed the test tubes and syringes with moist cotton wool, which would enable each ant to survive for two months, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).<\/p>\n The plan was to take them to Europe and Asia and put them up for sale.<\/p>\n This trade in ants has caught scientists and the authorities by surprise.<\/p>\n The East African nation is more accustomed to high-profile wildlife crimes involving elephant tusks and rhino horns.<\/p>\n UK-based retailer Ants R Us describes the giant African harvester ant as \u201cmany people\u2019s dream species\u201d \u2013 though the queens are currently out of stock, with the site explaining that it is very hard for retailers to source them.<\/p>\n \u201cEven I, as an entomologist, have been surprised at the extent of the apparent trade,\u201d Dino Martins, a biologist based in Kenya, where there are around 600 kinds of ants, told the BBC.<\/p>\n However, he can understand the fascination with East Africa\u2019s harvester, with colonies created by a \u201cfoundress queen\u201d, who can grow up to 25mm (0.98 inches) and who produces eggs throughout her life.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are one of the most enigmatic species of ants \u2013 they form large colonies, engage in interesting behaviours and are easy to keep. They are not aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n During the swarming he says the queens mate with several males.<\/p>\n \u201cThen that is it for the males \u2013 their job is done\u2026 most are eaten by predators or die,\u201d the entomologist says, going on to explain how the queen then scurries away to dig a small burrow and begin laying eggs to start her empire.<\/p>\n Her workers and soldier ants, those that protect the nest, are all female and will eventually number in the hundreds of thousands.<\/p>\n \u201cNests can live for over 50 years, perhaps even up to 70 years. I personally know of nests near Nairobi that are at least 40 years old as I\u2019ve been visiting them for that long,\u201d said Martins.<\/p>\n This means the queens live that long too \u2013 because as soon as she dies, the colony collapses and any surviving workers will look for another nest.<\/p>\n Kenyans who have had to deal with ants raiding their crops or invading their houses know this well \u2013 and to get rid of a colony someone is sent in to locate the queen, often hidden deep in one of the tunnels or chambers of an ant mound.<\/p>\n The former broker said ants could also be harvested by gently disturbing the mound and collecting them as they tried to escape.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was only when I saw the arrests on the news that I realised what I had been part of \u2013 and I immediately quit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Those arrested were convicted on charges of biopiracy and ordered to pay fines or serve 12 months in jail \u2013 they opted to pay the $7,700 fee and the foreign nationals left the country.<\/p>\n Two weeks ago, a Chinese national \u2013 be the alleged mastermind behind last year\u2019s ring and who is said to have escaped using a different passport, was arrested at Nairobi\u2019s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) with another 2,000 queen ants packed in test tubes and tissue rolls.<\/p>\n For Zhengyang Wang, who was part of a team of researchers who published a report on the ant trade in 2023 focusing on China, this is a worry and could \u201cwreak havoc\u201d with local ecosystems.<\/p>\n \u201cInitially, we were very excited when we learnt that many people have taken up keeping ants,\u201d Wang, assistant professor at Sichuan University, told the BBC.<\/p>\n \u201cA colony of pet ants are often kept in a formicarium, which is basically a transparent plastic box so that keepers can observe colonies at work, digging tunnels, collecting food, and guarding their queen. I\u2019d say it\u2019s quite charming and\u2026 can be a good way of educating people about insects and their behaviour.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then we realised, wait, isn\u2019t keeping invasive species incredibly dangerous?\u201d<\/p>\n Monitoring online sales \u2013 of more than 58,000 colonies \u2013 in China over six months, the researchers found that more than a quarter of the traded species were not native to China \u2013 despite it being illegal to import them.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the trade volume of invasive ants continues to grow, it\u2019s only a matter of time before a few escape from their formicaria and become established in the wild,\u201d said Wang.<\/p>\n The study he worked on, published in the journal Biological Conservation, explained what could happen in the case of giant African harvester, one of the most traded species in China: \u201cFor example, Messor cephalotes<\/em>, an East African native, is among the largest seed harvesters in the world and could potentially disrupt predominantly grain-based agriculture in south-eastern China.\u201d<\/p>\n The environmental consequences are also a concern in Kenya.<\/p>\n \u201cHarvester ants are both keystone species and ecosystem engineers. They harvest seeds of grasses, and other plants and in so doing also help to disperse the seeds,\u201d said Martins, adding that the insects \u201ccreate a more healthy and dynamic grassland\u201d.<\/p>\n Mukonyi Watai, a senior scientist at Kenya\u2019s Wildlife Research and Training Institute, shares these fears.<\/p>\n \u201cUnsustainable harvesting \u2013 particularly the removal of queen ants \u2013 can lead to colony collapse, disrupting ecosystems and threatening biodiversity,\u201d he told the BBC.<\/p>\n It is possible to collect ants legally in Kenya \u2013 in line with various international treaties \u2013 with a special permit, which would require the buyer to sign a benefit-sharing agreement with the local community involved to split any profits.<\/p>\n But, according to the KWS, so far none have been applied for \u2013 with the paperwork also requiring details of how many ants are being collected and their destination.<\/p>\n Some conservationists are now calling for greater trade protections for all ant species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), the global wildlife trade treaty.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is that no ant species is currently listed under Cites,\u201d S\u00e9rgio Henriques, a researcher into the global ant trade, told the BBC.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout international treaties monitoring these movements, the scale of the trade remains largely invisible to policy makers and the global community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But for the KWS the real problem is more immediate \u2013 how to monitor and clamp down on \u201cunder-reported\u201d insect trafficking, with the agency suggesting better surveillance equipment at airports and others border points would be a good start.<\/p>\n Martins agrees: \u201cIt is likely only a fraction of the actual ants being traded that are being detected, so one can only guess at the scale for now.\u201d<\/p>\n Journalist Charles Onyango-Obbo argues that Kenya is overlooking a significant global revenue opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ants are not finite items like gold or diamonds. They are biological assets that can be bred and farmed, and their production can be scaled up to thousand a day. Yet we treat them like stolen artefacts,\u201d he recently wrote in Kenya\u2019s Daily Nation newspaper.<\/p>\n In fact, Kenya\u2019s cabinet did approve policy guidelines last year aimed at commercialising the wildlife economy, including the ant trade.<\/p>\n \u201cThe guidelines seek to promote sustainable use trade of wild species such as ants to generate jobs, wealth and community livelihoods across all the counties,\u201d said Watai.<\/p>\n With careful monitoring in place, it could be that future farmers around Gilgil will have special formicaria on their land expanding the yields from their fields and orchards \u2013 full of vegetables and fruits \u2013 to include lucrative queen ants.<\/p>\n But the debate over the dangers of exporting ants to hobby collectors in different parts of the world is yet to be settled.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ants are flying in Kenya at the moment. During this rainy season, swarms can be seen leaving the thousands of anthills in and around Gilgil, a quiet agricultural town in Kenya\u2019s Rift Valley that has emerged as the centre of a booming illegal trade. The mating ritual sees winged males leave the nest to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}