By Wendy Anders

At 3:00 a.m. yesterday in northern Costa Rica, judicial investigative agency (OIJ) police captured a man suspected of infringing Costa Rica’s wildlife protection laws.

The 55-year-old was carrying 50 baby iguanas and an adult iguana in a sack on a bus.

Police had been monitoring the man’s activities for a few days prior to the arrest, and they called in  some support from the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications (MINAET) to assist on the scene.

The man was arrested after he boarded a bus in Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz on the Nicoya Peninsula in the country’s northwestern province of Guanacaste in the early morning hours. The bus was destined for San José.

The baby iguanas were judged to be just a few days old, and it appears that the man was planning to sell them to pet stores in San José.

The man was handed over to the Santa Cruz flagrancy court so they could determine how to move forward with the case.

The MINAET handled the sack contents.