by Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Noble Park North man must pay $34,000 after pleading guilty to 67 charges relating to an illegal cross-border reptile trade and wildlife licence breaches.
In an ironic twist, Zehong Zheng, 24, was reunited with some of the 139 seized lizards after Sunshine magistrate Carolyn Howe rejected a department submission to destroy 31 of them.
“Why are you seeking to destroy them?” Ms Howe asked a prosecutor.
The 31 lizards were too costly to maintain for the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and too difficult to find suitable homes, the prosecutor submitted.
Zheng originally faced 565 charges over 18 months after Conservation Regulator officials raided his home and a home in Caroline Springs in January 2023.
He was identified as the principal offender in Operation Pike, in which officers seized 139 native reptiles such as shingleback lizards, and Centralian and common blue-tongue skinks.
All up, the initial charges involved 158 animals across 14 species kept without a wildlife permit, 89 illegally imported/exported animals, and 166 animals kept in contravention of Zheng’s wildlife licence.
He was also accused of forging documents for illegal sales – punishable by up to 10 years’ jail.
There was no evidence that Zheng mistreated or neglected the animals.
However his offending led to potential biodiversity and biosecurity risks, a prosecutor told Sunshine Magistrates’ Court on 11 February.
Zheng’s offending was described by his lawyer as largely regulatory. He’d made an “extremely foolish” decision to doctor existing wildlife permits to bypass the regulatory regime.
“He’s engaging in offending which if he followed the right steps would be lawful.”
Born in China, Zheng arrived in Australia with his family when he was 14.
Speaking little English, he found it difficult to fit in at school and grew a fascination for lizards, his lawyer told the court.
The engineering graduate and now junior project manager sought a non-conviction so to preserve his hopes of professional registration and travel to China.
In sentencing, magistrate Howe ordered Zheng to look after 22 of the seized blue-tongues – those that didn’t require to be under the care of a licencee.
There was doubt whether he’d be reissued with a wildlife licence.
The department was ordered to find homes for the remaining nine specimens.
The department also sought Zheng to pay $70,125 costs for the upkeep of the seized reptiles up to two years ago.
Zheng’s lawyer disputed the “extraordinary sum” as well as the power of the court to award such costs.
Eventually prosecution and defence lawyers settled on $30,000.
Howe sentenced Zheng to a two-year ‘good behaviour bond’ with no conviction, due to his young age, the unsophisticated crimes, guilty plea, no priors, “real prospects” of rehabilitation and a budding professional career.
Zheng must also donate $4000 to the court’s charity fund.
