Part 2 of the Wildlife crime – understanding risks, avenues for action learning series provides companies, policy makers, practitioners and law enforcement with information and background knowledge on crime and corruption in the exotic pet trade.
2. Introduction to the exotic pet trade
Large numbers of wild animals across the globe are captured, transported and sold to serve the international pet trade. Illegal activity takes place at multiple points along the supply chain, allowing illegally sourced animals to enter legal markets.
While it is unknown what percentage of animals in the pet trade are trafficked, the overall number of wild animals sold each year in domestic and international markets is staggering. For example:
- Within Brazil, 38 million birds are caught and sold illegally every year (Ortiz-von Halle, 2019)
- Togo, Benin and Ghana export 100,000 ball pythons each year (World Animal Protection, 2020)
- Every year, Central and East Java export more than one million tokay geckos (Nijman, 2012)
- As many as 400,000 Asiatic softshell turtles are trafficked from Sumatra (Nijman, 2012)
- Millions of salt-water aquarium fish, almost entirely wild caught, are imported into the EU each year with few checks on their legality (Earth Journalism Network, 2020).
Individual cases of live animal trafficking can involve large numbers of animals across several species. To take just one example, an Australian man was arrested in May 2019 and charged with 169 counts of animal abuse and trafficking. Among the animals he poached and trafficked to China by mail were crocodiles, lizards, snakes and turtles. He had already been implicated in a 2017 seizure of 147 reptiles of various species.