A Quarter of All Reptile Species, Many of Them Endangered, Are Sold Online

[UngulateNerd92]

A new study finds 75 percent of the species sold are not regulated by any trade agreement.

Live reptiles are easy to buy online. Colombian redtail boas, Mt. Koghis Leachianus geckos, and even Southern New Guinea stream turtles, a species only known to science since 2015, can be bought with a few clicks. Some species are common; others are rare, unique to particular islands or hills. For many of these species, whether or not this mostly unregulated trade threatens their population in the wild is unknown.

A study published today in Nature Communications finds the scale of that online reptile trade is larger than previously thought, and that many reptile species are traded without protections from international regulations. After scraping the internet for data on reptiles for sale, the authors found that 3,943 reptile species—more than 35 percent of all reptile species—have been traded over the past 20 years, 2,754 of them online. “We were just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of species,” says Alice Hughes, an ecologist at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in Yunnan, China, and an author of the study.

A Quarter of All Reptile Species, Many of Them Endangered, Are Sold Online | Science | Smithsonian Magazine

 

[UngulateNerd92]

Here is another relevant article from Scientific American.

Online Reptile Trade Is a Free-for-All That Threatens Thousands of Species

 

[Valentinoamor]

Crested Geckos are listed as vulnerable, but the wild population isn't be affected by the pet industry.

 

[UngulateNerd92]

Crested Geckos are listed as vulnerable, but the wild population isn't be affected by the pet industry.

Interesting. Are there any papers or studies that make note of this?

 

[Jurek7]

I see several problems with this article:
- Large number of names in trade is a juicy number, but there is no evidence that most or majority are traded on a substantial scale or threatened by it.
- The number of pets actually sold could be very much inflated. The article talks about an export quota of 3 million tokay geckos per year from Indonesia around 2015. The international market for such numbers of pet lizards does not exist. I found an industry report from 2011 which says that in the USA only 800 thousands households owned any species of pet lizard other than iguana (17% of 4.7 m, note that huge majority would be a handful of captive-bred common species). It looks like this alarm about hundreds of pet tigers and other big cats kept in the U.S. backyards which turned not to exist.
https://c7a4e6v3.rocketcdn.me/wp-co...odern_US_Reptile_Industry_05_12_2011Final.pdf
- Many little-known species online are likely mis-identified, for example from ignorance or to generate buzz or popularity of the site.
- One of the derivative articles claims that 'for 20 species whole population was captured' but I see no sign of 20 extinct in the wild reptiles in IUCN or elsewhere.
- All-over ban on reptile trade would be impossible to enforce, as evidence by e.g. trade on Madagascar tortoises which are oficially illegal to trade.
- All around ban will decrease public interest in reptiles, and decrease incentive to research and sustainably breed reptiles. It could be counter-productive to conservation of reptiles which otherwise generate too little interest or sympathy but face major other threats.
- A circular reasoning seems to be raising alarm that reptiles are traded within short time of description. First, only 5.5% are so. Then, it is impossible to find a name of a reptile before it was named. The reptiles could be traded earlier under a different name, or described because animals in trade were noticed.
- The international trade ban does nothing to stop domestic trade (here the authors like to cite ban on wild bird trade in Europe and USA, however it did nothing to stop problems like bird trade in Indonesia or domestic trade in parrots in South America).
- The original article proposes 'proof of sustainability before trade is allowed' which seems to be a classic catch-22 impossible.

 

[Valentinoamor]

Interesting. Are there any papers or studies that make note of this?

No clue. There are so many of them in captivity that people use them as feeders for their larger lizards/snakes.

I'm bias towards the reptile hobby, as I'm part of it and would be extremely upset if it was banned, but I don't think that banning reptiles as pets is a good idea. As someone that appreciates animal education, being able to introduce people to my reptiles and help them realize that they're more than ugly, "slimy" creatures is indescribable.

There are issues with the hobby (i.e. overbreeding of certain species, breeding animals with unhealthy mutations just so the animals can have 'pretty colors,' overharvesting) but I think that they could be settled without having to ban them entirely.