A LEGAL CHALLENGE
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The problem is largely enabled by abuse of Cites itself. The treaty prohibits species that are threatened with extinction from being commercially traded across borders unless they were bred in captivity.
These rules apply to the international pet trade, an important source of revenue for many developing countries. Each year, officials in exporting nations issue quotas for millions of captive-bred birds, amphibians, small mammals, insects and corals. Many are protected in their home countries, and their trade is governed by the treaty.
Reptiles are especially popular. Collectors often have an almost fanatical devotion to their animals and are willing to pay handsomely, especially for rare specimens, said Sandra Altherr, co-founder of Pro Wildlife, a nonprofit conservation group in Munich.
Unethical traders know that snakes, lizards and turtles do not rank as high priorities for law enforcement and customs officials in Western countries.
“Reptiles are coldblooded and not fluffy, and the broad public ? including politicians ? just isn’t interested in them,” Dr. Altherr said. “Yet there are huge, dangerous loopholes that allow for open trading of the rarest species.”
In addition, many exotic pets originate in developing countries where officials may lack the expertise, motivation or resources to verify that animals about to be shipped out were in fact bred in captivity.
“We don’t have a lot of resources here in the U.S., and developing countries have even less than we do,” said Phet Souphanya, a senior special agent at the Fish and Wildlife Service. “Corruption also goes into the permitting issue ? there’s always someone to be bribed.”
Once imported, exotic pets can be legally sold or re-exported. “Those involved in trafficking wildlife know the loopholes inside out,” said Chris Shepherd, executive director of Monitor, a nonprofit organization that works to reduce illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade.
“They know enforcement agencies’ hands are tied, and they know policy change in favor of conservation does happen overnight.”
In the United States, the government has to legally prove that animals are not captive-bred ? something that is “very, very difficult to do,” said Marie Palladini, an associate professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
In the early 1990s, when Dr. Palladini was a field specialist at the Fish and Wildlife Service, she helped lead an investigation of pythons smuggling from Papua New Guinea and sold in the United States as captive-bred.
The American importer was eventually prosecuted, but that success required two years of exhaustive work. It also benefited from Papua New Guinea’s willingness to collaborate.
Many countries, however, do not even bother responding to inquiries sent by American agents. And sometimes, officials in exporting countries vouch for suspect shipments. Then American agents have no recourse, Mr. Souphanya said. “If they’re certifying that their permit process is correct, we can’t tell them, ‘Hey, you guys are wrong,7” he said. “It’s a difficult thing to prove.”
WARNING SIGN
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Even when it can’t be proved, there may be other telltale signs that animals were caught in the wild.
Some species sold as captive-bred are notoriously difficult to coax into reproducing. For example, leading zoos around the world over the decades have managed to breed fewer than 50 echidnas ? egg-laying mammals that resemble hedgehogs.
Yet in 2016, Indonesian officials permitted PT Alam Nusantara, a Jakarta based company, to export 45 “captive-bred” echidnas. Fish and Wildlife Service records show that as early as 2011, the exporters was shipping echidnas labeled captive-born to the United States.
That echidnas appeared on the quota list at all suggests that traders had a hand in setting it, Dr. Nijman said.
“Having been present at those meetings, it felt more like a negotiation between what traders wanted, what regional forestry departments could offer, and what was within acceptable limits for the scientific authority,” he said.
Because of this, he continued, a country’s list of permissible captive-bred animals often appears scattershot and illogical. Reisinger’s tree monitors and spotted tree monitors, for example, suddenly appeared on Indonesia’s list of permissible exports in 2015, only to be removed the following year.
“It doesn’t make sense to invest years and years into breeding a particular species, only to then suddenly no longer export it and change to another species,” Dr. Nijman said.
The more likely explanation? “New entries represent new demand for rare species,” he said. That is, traders received a request, lobbied for the species to be added to the list and exported animals found in the wild ? then moved on.
Indonesia’s quota list is tightly regulated and based on scientific data, according to Prama Wirasena, head of captive breeding at Indonesia’s Ministry of the Environment and Forestry.
Regional forestry officials visit farms each month to count breeding adults, he said, and those figures are used to set export quotas and to ensure the numbers add up. “We are certain there is ‘laundering,’ but it is less than 10 percent overall,” Mr. Wirasena said.
But a recent study in Conservation Biology suggests that number is considerably higher. The authors found that Indonesia’s quotas for 99 of 129 species were calculated based on biologically impossible parameters.
Mr. Wirasena protested that the study’s authors used low-quality data and made faulty calculations. But others at the ministry offered an alternate explanation.
“I know sometimes the traders bribe my staff,” said Wiranto, director general of conservation of natural resources and ecosystems. (Like many Indonesians, he uses only a first name.)
Mr. Wiranto, who was recently promoted, said he hopes to implement reforms, among them a more robust monitoring system that includes unannounced farm inspections, corruption prevention measures and collaborative investigations with importers like the United States. “We’re in the process of learning from past mistakes, so in the future we won’t do the same,” he said. “The most important thing is to keep wildlife in its habitat.”
Meanwhile change will not come unless violators are systematically shut down, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “The Extinction Market.”
“Doing that, you can produce competition among farmers to move toward better practices,” she said. “Those who behave better will come to control a greater share of the market.”
But slowing the traffic in animals stolen from the wild cannot be the sole responsibility of developing countries. “We can’t only point fingers at Asia and Africa,” Dr. Altherr said, “if we’re one of the main destinations.”
