Beagle Brigade's Gatsby Sniffs Out Banned Plants At BWI Airport

BALTIMORE, MD — An alert customs officer named Gatsby with one of the strongest noses in the world stopped plants with potential insect pests as hijackers at the Baltimore customs checkpoint last week.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Beagle Brigade agriculture detector dog Gatsby alerted to the baggage of a Virginia family of three who arrived on a Jan. 7 flight to Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport from Iceland. CBP agriculture specialists inspected the baggage and discovered 21 prohibited plants and bags of bulbs in the family’s baggage. The family declared possessing only tulip bulbs, authorities said.

Passengers are required to attain certificates from the original country verifying that the plants meet United States entry requirements. Seeds and live plant materials may be invasive to the U.S. ecology and pose a threat to crop plants, a Customs Office news release said. Soil-borne pests or pathogens threaten both plants and animals.

CBP agriculture specialists who examined the plants found a worm and two snails, then sent the specimens to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for identification. The plants and bulbs were seized for destruction.

Customs officers released the family, who traveled from the United Kingdom and were en route to their home in Frederick County, Virginia, after they paid a $300 fine for possessing undeclared prohibited agricultural items.

Gatsby is part of CBP’s Beagle Brigade, trained canine partners that help CBP agriculture specialists protect the U.S. from plant and animal diseases, invasive insects, and federal noxious weed. Gatsby has served on CBP’s Beagle Brigade for nearly five years.

“Finding such a vast quantity of plants and bulbs in one family’s baggage is unusual and the potential threat these items pose to our nation’s agricultural resources underscores the importance of travelers knowing what they can and cannot bring to the United States,” said Adam Rottman, area port director for CBP’s Area Port of Baltimore, in a news release. “This is another in a long series of important finds by Gatsby and Customs and Border Protection’s Beagle Brigade.”

CBP agriculture specialists inspect tens of thousands of international air passengers, and air and sea cargoes being imported to the United States. During a typical day last year, specialists across the nation seized 4,552 prohibited plant, meat, animal byproducts, and soil, and intercepted 319 insect pests at U.S. ports of entry.

CBP urges all travelers to visit CBP’s Travel website to ‘know before they go’ and learn what products that are prohibited or inadmissible to bring to the United States.