Endangered Species : Man Accused of Selling Python-Skin Clothing

The Los Angeles city attorney’s environmental protection unit has charged a downtown garment merchant with importing dresses and slacks fashioned from endangered South African diamond python skins and worth about $200,000, City Atty. James K. Hahn announced Tuesday.

In the largest such case in state history, the 24-count criminal complaint charges that a total of 104 items of clothing were seized from the merchant, David Barr Inc., on Dec. 6. That was the latest of 24 shipments of nearly 2,000 similar garments, sent to the company during 1985 from Cape Town, South Africa, said Hahn.

The skin of the python Reticulatus, or diamond python, is among a score of animal products that cannot be sold under the state’s stringent endangered species act. Hahn said state Fish and Game inspector Louise Fiorillo had confiscated 11 python-skin clothing items from the store on Nov. 7 and told Barr he was violating state law, but that less than a month later, investigators seized the 104 python garments.

“We believe the evidence will show that at that time, Mr. Barr expressed ignorance of the law and promised to obey it,” said Hahn, “and then turned around and accepted four more shipments of python-skin clothing from Cape Town between Nov. 7 and the Dec. 6 raid.”

David Barr, contacted by The Times, said the incident was “really embarrassing.”

“At the time we were distributing them we were unaware of them being rare endangered species.” After the Nov. 7 raid, he said he informed the exporter about the law and was told “that they were using a different skin, but it looks very similar (to diamond python). What we received was python, but they (told us) that it wasn’t python (and) we were caught in the middle. We’ve stopped doing business with the firm.”

The clothes carry a wholesale value of about $200,000, said Steve Tekosky, who heads the environmental protection unit.