Latvia came down hard on a man who squashed the eggs of a protected bird species, issuing a €50,000 fine that his lawyers said valued them as if they were pure gold.
A court in the Baltic state ordered the penalty after the man came across the nests of black-headed gulls - a protected species - and crushed several eggs.
"These 10 eggs are priced higher than if they were made of pure gold," his lawyers protested, according to a report from the local paper Latvijas Avize.
Judge Lauris Shnepsts however remained unmoved, arguing that it was wrong "to compare precious wildlife with a piece of shiny metal".
"I hope this case will set a legal precedent for wildlife protection in our country," he told reporters following the verdict.
The incident dates back to the spring of 2021, when Artis Krumins rowed across a northern lake to an island inhabited only by wild birds and smashed the eggs.
The crime may have gone unnoticed had it not been for a local scientist who happened to be doing field research there and whose footage helped crack the case.
"I tried to calm down the egg-crusher but he got even more aggressive, he started to use his oars to throw up eggs in the air and hit them," the professor later testified in the courtroom.
