Housewife’s Cruel Trade in Endangered Animals

THIS woman is Elizabeth Bushnall a housewife who hides a sinister secret.

Because behind the curtains of her tiny Shropshire bungalow, Mrs Bushnall trades endangered animals over the internet.

For little more than pounds 750, she offers customers the chance to buy a dangerously rare marmoset monkey via a discreet online advert.

Mrs Bushnall, who is in her 50s and from Ketley Bank in Telford, can today be exposed by a Sunday Mercury investigation into internet animal sales.

It comes just days after campaigners demanded a Government crackdown on the cruel trade of species facing extinction.

When we confronted Mrs Bushnall outside her home on Friday, she told our reporter: "I don’t want my picture in the paper. I’ve sold the marmoset now and got a cockatoo instead. I didn’t know marmosets were endangered."

Our investigation began last week after the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) highlighted the growing market in exotic animals on the web.

In one spot-check, IFAW’s researchers found 146 live primates listed for sale on different online sites, alongside nearly 9,000 wildlife products such as elephant tusks or lion skins.

Among the live animals offered on the internet was a ‘hand- reared’ Siberian tiger for pounds 39,000 and a chimpanzee for pounds 36,000.

Another site offered a giraffe for pounds 28,000 and a Nile crocodile for just pounds 166.

A seven year-old gorilla was even being advertised for sale from a flat in London for pounds 4,900.

Our reporter visited two websites mentioned in IFAW’s report and quickly unearthed an array of exotic animals for sale in the Midlands.

On one site, next to classified adverts for cars, a woman calling herself Lisa Lishinto from Shropshire offered a marmoset for sale.

In fact, we discovered that Mrs Lishinto was actually a false name used by Mrs Bushnall.

On a separate website, the same contact details were listed on a virtually identical advert, this time carrying Mrs Bushnall’s real name and offering the endangered monkey for pounds 750 in cash.

It read: ‘For sale/adoption: Lovely marmoset, female, semi-tame, make nice pet or breeding stock.’ Mrs Bushnall, who lives with her husband, Tony, has more than 15 pets at her tiny bungalow.

She admitted she did not have the space to keep a monkey – and said she knew owning the animal was cruel. Mrs Bushnall said she had bought the animalfromaman in Manchester after answering an internet advert.

"I shouldn’t have bought it and I shouldn’t have sold it on," she told the Mercury. "I know that now."

Rosa Hill, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said: "All primates are endangered and marmosets are near the top of the list.

"Their natural habitat is the South American rainforest in northern Brazil but that is being seriously threatened by deforestation.

"We are extremely worried about the growing trend of buying and selling primates over the internet.

"There is an underground market in the online trade of these animals as pets and the Sunday Mercury hasshown that to be the case today. "Marmosets suffer tremendous stress when they are kept in captivity. They are not pets and they desperately need better protection from the Government