Chinese Tree Frog Hunter Detained in Maritime Territory

The border guards in the Maritime Territory (the Far East) have captured this year's first Chinese hunter for tree frogs.

Officials of the press centre of the Pacific regional directorate of the Frontier Service of Russia said on Monday that the Chinese citizen who was hunting for tree frogs was found near a forest river. A sniffer dog did not allow the border violator to escape.

The Chinese was equipped adequately - three bottles of an unknown, presumably poisoning substance which is now being examined by experts was confiscated from him.

The Chinese had caught 65 tree frogs by the moment he was captured. He was detained and taken to a temporary isolation ward for carrying out an investigation.

The Chinese consider tree frogs to be a delicacy. Special fat which is widely used in Oriental medicine is obtained from these frogs. That is why when warm weather sets in in the Maritime Territory dozens of hunters for tree frog rush into the Territory from neighbouring China.

Frogs are caught by barbarous methods, poisoning of river water with pesticides being one of the most dangerous "inventions". In January 2003 the staffers of the Barsovy game refuge found places of mass destruction of ichthyofauna in the Ryazanovka river: Chinese poachers had poured poison into the water.

A wooden hut of Chinese poachers was recently found on the bank of the Sedankinskoye water reservoir which supplied the whole of Vladivostok (the administrative centre of the Maritime Territory) with water. Appliances for catching tree frogs, prohibited by law, were also found there.