Live reptile smuggling is predicted by trends in the legal exotic pet trade

Oliver  Stringham; Pablo Garcia Diaz; Adam Toomes; Lewis  Mitchell; Joshua Ross; Phill Cassey

doi:10.1111/conl.12833

Live reptile smuggling is predicted by trends in the legal exotic pet trade

Oliver Stringham^* (Corresponding Author), Pablo Garcia Diaz, Adam Toomes, Lewis Mitchell, Joshua Ross, Phill Cassey

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

University of Adelaide

Research output: Contribution to journal › Letter › peer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

43 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Live animal smuggling presents a suite of conservation and biosecurity concerns, including the introduction of invasive species and diseases. Yet, understanding why certain species are smuggled over others, and predicting which species will be smuggled, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we compared the live reptile species illegally smuggled to Australia (75 species) to the legal trade of live
reptile species in the United States. Almost all smuggled species were found in the legal US pet market (74 species), and we observed an average time lag of 5.6 years between a species first appearing in the United States and its subsequent detection in Australia. Using a Bayesian regression model, species popularity in the United States, and internationally, were positively associated with smuggling probability to Australia. Our findings give insight to the drivers of illegal wildlife trade and our predictive modelling approach provides a framework for anticipating future trends in wildlife smuggling.

Original language	English
Article number	e12833
Number of pages	10
Journal	Conservation Letters
Volume	14
Issue number	6
Early online date	17 Aug 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12833
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2021

Bibliographical note

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was funded by the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions (Project PO1-I-002). PG-D was partially supported by NERC grant NE/S011641/1 under the Newton Latam program. The authors acknowledge the Indigenous Traditional Owners of the land on which the University of Adelaide is built—the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We thank Jacob Maher and Talia Wittmann for sharing Australian zoo keeping data.

Keywords

alien species
Biosecurity
illegal wildlife trade
pet trade
trafficking
wildlife trade

Access to Document

10.1111/conl.12833Licence: CC BY

Stringham_etal_CL_Live_Reptile_Smuggling_VoR
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2021 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals LLC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 4.37 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Live animal smuggling presents a suite of conservation and biosecurity concerns, including the introduction of invasive species and diseases. Yet, understanding why certain species are smuggled over others, and predicting which species will be smuggled, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we compared the live reptile species illegally smuggled to Australia (75 species) to the legal trade of livereptile species in the United States. Almost all smuggled species were found in the legal US pet market (74 species), and we observed an average time lag of 5.6 years between a species first appearing in the United States and its subsequent detection in Australia. Using a Bayesian regression model, species popularity in the United States, and internationally, were positively associated with smuggling probability to Australia. Our findings give insight to the drivers of illegal wildlife trade and our predictive modelling approach provides a framework for anticipating future trends in wildlife smuggling.",

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N2 - Live animal smuggling presents a suite of conservation and biosecurity concerns, including the introduction of invasive species and diseases. Yet, understanding why certain species are smuggled over others, and predicting which species will be smuggled, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we compared the live reptile species illegally smuggled to Australia (75 species) to the legal trade of livereptile species in the United States. Almost all smuggled species were found in the legal US pet market (74 species), and we observed an average time lag of 5.6 years between a species first appearing in the United States and its subsequent detection in Australia. Using a Bayesian regression model, species popularity in the United States, and internationally, were positively associated with smuggling probability to Australia. Our findings give insight to the drivers of illegal wildlife trade and our predictive modelling approach provides a framework for anticipating future trends in wildlife smuggling.

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Live reptile smuggling is predicted by trends in the legal exotic pet trade

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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US influence on Australia’s illegal pet trade

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Live reptile smuggling is predicted by trends in the legal exotic pet trade

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

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US influence on Australia’s illegal pet trade

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