Authorities on the Italian island of Sardinia said a French tourist was fined $1,200 for attempting to leave the country with 4.4 pounds of white sand from a local beach. Photo by StephanieAlbert/Pixabay.com
"The bottle was confiscated and is in 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," a spokesman for the Forest Rangers told CNN.
A regional law introduced in 2017 made it illegal to take sand from Sardinia's beaches, with fines ranging from $600 to $3,550 depending on the amount of sand taken and where it was taken from.
"Last year we found a website that was selling our sand as souvenirs. It's become a very known phenomenon here in Europe," the spokesman said.
