The consignment of armadillo girdled lizards smuggled from South Africa were hidden inside stuffed toys in a package labelled as “toy animals, T-shirts and markers”, destined for Florida in the US.
When it was X-rayed, US authorities discovered and confiscated the reptiles, which are now being housed at the Cincinnati Zoo. “We could not find any information relating to the prosecution of the South African exporter,” notes the EMS Foundation and Ban Animal Trading of the seizure last November, in their latest report, Plundered: South Africa’s Cold-Blooded International Reptile Trade.
Plundered is the third instalment in their Extinction Business series with the previous reports examining South Africa’s controversial lion bone trade and the live wildlife trade between South Africa and China.
Both found how loopholes and ineffective controls in the permit system, which includes the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), enable the international laundering and smuggling of live wildlife.
It’s no different in the global trade in live reptiles, amphibians and arachnids: mostly unregulated, often unlawful and a growing industry in South Africa.
“Data on the trade in these species is unreliable and insufficient because most countries do not keep records or compile data unless the species is listed on the Cites Appendices... Even then, the data are incomplete.”
Unlike so-called charismatic species– lions, elephants, tigers and primates– perceived to have higher intrinsic value, reptiles are, “in terms of public perception, and often because of negative stereotypes, considered less desirable creatures, lacking the charismatic appeal of anthropomorphic species and consequently they are afforded less attention”.
Endemic to South Africa and nationally-protected, armadillo girdled lizards, for example, are a Cites Appendix II-listed species, meaning that while not necessarily threatened with extinction, their trade must be controlled to avoid use incompatible with their survival.
“They don’t do well in captivity and often succumb to disease. In spite of this, individuals are exported as captive-bred or bred from wild-caught parents... We could not find the details of permitted breeders of armadillo girdled lizards in SA.”
Demand for the pet trade, particularly in Japan, is a growing threat to their survival. “Several Japanese citizens poaching these lizards in South Africa have been prosecuted and sentenced. The lizards can also be found for sale online.”
Last year, a family group in the UK was advertised for $4 500, excluding shipping costs. “We could only find one so-called legal export of this species to the UK on the Cites trade database in 1982.”
At least 50% of reptiles, amphibians and arachnids, says the report, are wild-caught or poached and laundered as captive-bred into the exotic wildlife pet trade. “While the other half are reported to have been captive-bred or ranched, making their sale ‘legal’ there are seldom checks on the validity of these claims.”
Reptiles are often sold through an informal network of breeders, at reptile trade fairs and online. Laundering is easy. “Plucking animals from the wild is cheap and does not require the setting up of a breeding operation.”
Most of South Africa’s indigenous snake and lizard species are not Cites listed. “The animals can be exported without the wildlife traders having to declare whether they have been wild caught or captive-bred and the purpose of the exports is not required either.”
At least 4 500 exotic and indigenous reptiles and amphibians were exported from South Africa from 2013 to May this year, says the report.Wits University professor of herpetology, Graham Alexander, a leading authority on reptiles, says the findings represent “the tip of the iceberg”. He was not involved in the report.
“The illegal side of it is probably an order of magnitude bigger than what’s recorded on permits... They don’t show the majority of stuff going out. We don’t even know what’s going out. It’s completely under the radar and rarely do people get caught because it’s so easy to smuggle the stuff.”
Reptiles, says the report, are among the most inhumanely treated animals in the pet trade: often cheap and easily replaceable, retailers factor huge mortality into their operating costs.
“The pet industry itself acknowledges a 70% mortality rate at wholesalers as an acceptable standard.” Poor capturing techniques, poor shipping conditions, inadequate care and poor welfare standards are to blame, it says.
“People will get a snake, shove it in a box and post it through PostNet,” says Alexander. “That sort of thing is very easy to do. If you get caught, you just make sure that with the addresses on there, there’s no traceability back to where it’s come from.
“When South African customs officials intercepted shipments coming from Madagascar, say to Germany, by the time they’ve got to SA, you’ve already had a significant die-off in the animals because of the way they have been packaged. By the time they get to Germany, it would obviously be worse.”
In recent years, Alexander’s team has developed genetic markers to do parentage tests on endemic wild caught sungazer lizards, which are sought-after pets in Japan, Europe and the US.
He explains how at some stages of the illicit trade, smuggled lizards were sold for €2000 (R41203) each. “If there were people exporting 100 a year, you can work it out – you don’t need another job... What’s been happening is that people will go out and poach 100 sungazers, and then say, ‘Oh look, I’ve bred these’.
There’s only two instances where breeding has actually been recorded in captivity. They just simply don’t breed and certainly not in the conditions these so-called breeders are keeping them in.
“We needed a mechanism to be able to measure whether these are actually captive-bred, to ask, ‘Where are your records, where are the parents for this individual’ and then we can do the genetic testing to see if they are telling the truth. As soon as we developed that, suddenly the supposedly legal export of sungazers stopped.”
The report finds it’s still “relatively easy” to find sungazers for sale. “The trade has gone underground– they just have different conduits,” says Alexander. “But I know some of the people that were exporting and laundering sungazers weren’t able to get exports again because they couldn’t demonstrate parentage.”
With sungazers, which have slow reproductive rates and are very long lived, “you can really make a big impact by poaching a species like that”.
Johan Marais of the African Snakebite Institute points out that the reptile trade is “very big worldwide”. “Historically, most of the reptiles shipped were wild-caught, decimating populations, with most of the reptiles not surviving very long. But they were cheap and easily captured so nobody really cared.”
This has changed for two reasons. “First, many countries no longer allow the exportation of wild-caught reptiles and this is the case in SA. Second, reptile keepers prefer captive-bred healthy animals that do far better in captivity.”
But while captive-bred reptiles are being exported legally from South Africa, unscrupulous reptile dealers play the system. “They either claim that their reptiles are captive-bred or capture gravid females from the wild, hold them until they produce eggs or babies and then claim the young are captive-bred.
“We see this in reptiles like sungazers that do not breed well in captivity. A shipment of 60 hatchlings what were claimed to have been captive-bred was stopped at OR Tambo International Airport a few years back and when DNA analysis was done on both the youngsters and adults, it was evident they were not related and not bred in captivity.”
The biggest problem is policing. “We pass conservation laws, restrict the export of reptiles but very little is done to ensure shipments are legal. Permits are issued easily without questioning and scrutiny and more and more wild-caught reptiles are leaving our shores. Some permits do not even specify the species.”
The main problem lies with the administration of the permitting system, says Alexander. “It’s slowing down research and conservation and the illegal exporters are just doing it illegally and that doesn’t impact them... People at customs at the airport need to be able to identify the species. A guy exporting will say there’s venomous snakes and nobody wants to open the bags. Then you are not limited to the species listed on your permits.
“Telling the difference between species often requires a fair amount of expertise. Having permits if you’re a supposed breeder, just being audited, checked up on, until now it effectively doesn’t happen.”
Joburg Zoo in tortoise trade saga
The Johannesburg Zoo is one of the biggest leopard tortoise suppliers to South African wildlife traders for the international pet market, according to the Plundered report.
“The zoo sells mostly so-called ‘captive-bred’ tortoises, handed in by the public, who believe the zoo will care for the animals, to wildlife traders,” the report said.
The Johannesburg Zoo, the report states, sold more than 700 leopard tortoises last year to South African Venom Supplies, owned by Beric Muller.
“The terms and conditions of the permits issued by GDARD (Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development) for the provincial export of tortoises from Gauteng to Limpopo, now state that these animals may not be exported internationally (this was not the case before 2019). However, there is no way to police this because the tortoises are not micro-chipped. They can be sold by one wildlife trader to another in SA, and tracing the animals becomes almost impossible.”
Muller, according to the report, paid a fine of R20 000 to the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF) in 2016 for attempting to illegally export 80 giant African bullfrogs and 150 rain frogs, which have never been successfully bred in captivity, to Taiwan for the pet and food market.
Johannesburg Zoo spokesperson Jenny Moodley said the not-for-profit organisation has noted the “inaccurate and reckless claim” by Ban Animal Trading movement BAT and EMS that there was a “sale” of reptiles by the zoo to the SA Venom Association.
“The Johannesburg Zoo did not sell its tortoises nor purchase any reptiles it acquired from SA Venom. The Johannesburg Zoo complied with permit requirements to relocate 400 specimens temporarily held at the Joburg Zoo that was confiscated by GDARD in 2019. Tortoises need to be provided with a high standard of animal husbandry and therefore only qualifying entities with the required legal permits issued by the relevant regulatory bodies, were involved in the relocation process.”
The report describes how leopard tortoises are “by far the species with the highest numbers of international exports from SA for the global pet trade”.
Mike Bester, cited in the report as a “notorious wildlife trader” among several other local and international traders listed, and who has long been involved in the tortoise trade, said hundreds of tortoises have been dropped off at zoos around South Africa over the past 20 years.
“Those animals may not be released by law. If they were not traded, they would be euthanised. To me, the trade is the second-best option to euthanising them.”
Bester, according to the report, exported more than 650 tortoises to a German breeder and online trader in tortoises, leopard tortoises to Togo, Ghana and Swaziland and to a wildlife dealer in the US, Nile crocodiles to South Korea, indigenous snakes to North Korea and exotic captive-bred snakes to Dubai and Malaysia. He imported wild-caught yellow-footed tortoises and wild-caught red-footed tortoises, and Mata Mata turtles from Guyana.
He said dealers in South Africa aware now questioning whether the permit information in the report was legally gained.
“If you’re a trader of animals in this country, the animal rights groups always say you are notorious. You’re never a trader, you’re also always a trafficker. It’s happened to me for the last 40 years. They’re against all trade, even pets.
“I’ve been very strict on selecting destinations over the years and have turned down many orders because of questionable destinations .... The trade in reptiles is highly regulated and everything is done on permits.”
Poaching threatens reptiles and amphibians
The threat to reptiles and amphibians would worsen without a huge effort to improve appreciation of reptiles and amphibians in their wild spaces, tackling poaching and addressing the role that social media plays in promoting the underground trade will worsen, said Dr Jeanne Tarrant, manager of the threatened amphibian programme at the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT).
Apart from tougher legislation and more stringent border controls, decreasing demand was of utmost importance. “As the (Plundered) report outlines, there is growing evidence to support an extremely worrying trend in the export and trade of amphibians and reptiles,” said Tarrant.
“It is a threat we are starting to engage in at the EWT, building on our existing trade prevention work on mammals, plants and with Cites.” That the trade is unregulated was worrisome. “But the fact that loopholes exist that allow the ‘legal’ trade of such species en masse is perhaps even more worrying.
“This demand speaks to the increasing disconnect that people have from nature, and in some twisted outcome, of how they desire to have access to nature and to be able to control it. The fact that 50% of species traded in these groups are wild-caught – ie impacting directly on wild populations and places – and yet claimed to be captive-bred, is extremely concerning.”
Tarrant said it was crucial that the public are aware of this, “and that they do not participate in the purchase of any animals that should be in the wild”. She added: “The Covid-19 pandemic is the direct result of destruction of nature and increasing encroachment into what remains of wild spaces.”
Legal and illegal wildlife trade is part and parcel of this, she says. “And if human health is a concern, we all need to play our part in limiting such behaviour. You may see a ‘cute’ video of a frog online – this does not mean that you should want to keep individuals of these species in captivity.”
The Plundered report says a handful of traders locally benefit from the trade, including an official of the Eastern Cape Department of Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism.
The official “exported black spitting cobras to a reptile trader in the US in 2017, and between 2017 and 2020, indigenous armadillo lizards, angulate tortoises, parrot-beaked tortoises, leopard tortoises and rock monitors ... to wholesale companies, pet shops, reptile breeders and online traders in Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Italy, Taiwan and Germany”.
Departmental spokesperson Ncedo Lisani said investigations are underway.
Reptile hobbyist says Plundered Report got it wrong
Reptile hobbyist and breeder Arno Naude is cited in the Plundered report, among the handful of traders "who benefit financially from the international trade in wild animals".
The report states: "We are aware of ball python experts by Naude to the US. Interestingly, Naude does not frown upon the smuggling of reptiles - he apparently believes that trafficked animals 'save their species indirectly' and that they contribute to the captive bred species gene pool."
The report shows screen grabs from a Facebook post by Naude on the Angolan Python Keepers and Breeders page, in which he states: "I have no issue with smuggled animals. They saved the species in an indirect way. We should be thankful that it happened (past tense) because now we don't need any more genes."
But his mention in the report is "rubbish", says Naude. "All they did was take two screenshots of my opinion on something that happened 20 years ago. So it seems kind of silly to throw me in the report with people who are doing illegal things.
"Yes, there were some Angolan ball pythons that were stolen, and it's wrong to do that, but we can be thankful they did that because the ones who are left, their value is low enough that no one is going to poach them ... I don't want these animals taken from the wild and have phoned the Green Scorpions many times to warn them about people taking stuff."