Grandmother’s shell-shock

Fined £300 for smuggling two rare tortoises

A WOMAN who brought two endangered tortoises back from holiday as pets for her grandson was fined £300 yesterday after being caught in an animal welfare charity ‘sting’.

Janice Rennie, 60, was caught after she advertised one of the tiny reptiles for sale in a newsagents’ window.

Stirling Sheriff Court heard the Scottish SPCA found one tortoise dead and the other hidden in a box in an oven.

Fiscal depute Shona McJannett, a specialist animal cruelty prosecutor at the Crown Office, said the SSPCA ‘received intelligence’ that Rennie, of Stirling, had brought three of the protected spurthighed tortoises home from a holiday in Tunisia on August 18 last year without the correct paperwork.

SSPCA officers called Rennie’s son, Michael on September 17 and asked about buying tortoises. Mr Rennie said he had one for sale and a meeting was set up for the next day at his home in Stirling.

Miss McJannett said: ‘ They attended at his house and the accused was present. Officers were shown two tortoises and told the smaller of the two was for sale.’

Officers were told Rennie was prepared to accept a price of £100 rather than £150 for the tortoise, and that documents were not required for the sale.

Miss McJannet said: ‘The SSPCA secured a search warrant for the property and found the smaller of the tortoises had died and the larger one was hidden in the oven.

‘Officers were concerned for the welfare of the live animal and it was signed into their care.’

Mr Rennie said his mother had asked him to sell the tortoise for her, while Rennie, a first offender, admitted she brought the tortoises back from Tunisia and had advertised one for sale in a Stirling newsagents and a local newspaper.

The court heard spur-thighed tortoises are on a red list of endangered species, at high risk of extinction. They are given the highest level of protection under endangered species law – import is prohibited and strictly regulated.

Rennie pleaded guilty to advertis- ing, offering and keeping for sale two Tunisian tortoises contrary to Control of Trade in Endangered Species regulations.

Defence solicitor Virgil Crawford told the court that Rennie had been ‘gifted’ the tortoises by Tunisians on a beach during her holiday in the country after her 13-year-old grandson, who l i ves with her, said that he wanted one of the reptiles.

He said: ‘She accepts that she brought them back to keep as pets for her grandson. A decision was taken to sell one of them because it appeared that the larger one was attacking the smaller one.

‘She thought it would be best not to keep it and did advertise one for sale.’

Fining Rennie, Sheriff Wyllie Robertson told he wanted to bring home to her the need to be very well informed before bringing such animals back to the UK.