Italy, a tourist has been fined after caught trying to steal sand from one of Italy’s beaches. A law about stealing sand from the beach has been introduced three years ago after locals get sick of tourists taking home sand as a souvenir. The sand from the island is protected and whoever can face fines and even serve jail time for stealing it.
The unnamed tourist was arrasted at the Cagliari Airport on September 1 after he was found carrying a bottle filled with 4.4lbs of sand, according to reports.
“The bottle was confiscated and is now in our operating room where we hold these confiscated items. At the end of the year we usually have many bottles of sand accumulated,” said a spokesman for Sardinia’s Forest Rangers.
It said that authorities were contending with increasingly frequent cases of sand theft, before a law change in 2017 to penalize culprits. According to the Forest Rangers spokesman, tourists who try to steal Sardinia’s sand face fines ranging from between €500 (RM2400) and €3,000 (RM14700), depending on the amount of the sand taken and where it was removed from on the beach.
A man has been fined around £900 (RM4900) after authorities discovered that he had taken sand from a beach near the city of Olbia. Last year, police seized 88lbs of sand from a French couple visiting Sardinia.
“Last year we found a website that was selling our sand as souvenirs. It’s become a very known phenomenon here in Europe,” said the spokesman.
Source: Mirror