Kenya conservationists raise alarm over decline in species as reptile pet trade surges

By AFP

Kenya’s commercial wildlife trade has expanded sharply over the past decade, with a tenfold rise in the number of captive-bred reptiles exported as exotic pets, a report by World Animal Protection said Thursday.

Although the trade is legal, 77 percent of traded species have seen their populations decline in the wild, raising sustainability concerns.

The trade in live reptiles rose sharply from 8,551 in 2013 to 86,330 in 2023, said the report, which analysed Kenya’s data from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The overall number of live animals traded over the same period was more than 870,000, it said, describing Kenya as “an increasingly important supplier to global pet and luxury wildlife markets.”

Wildlife trade is a multibillion-dollar global industry involving millions of animals each year.

According to the report, the most traded reptiles in Kenya include chameleons and tortoises, with the largest markets in Germany, the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and Spain.

In 2013, Kenya adopted the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act to regulate captive breeding and tackle a boom in poaching.

But Patrick Muinde, lead researcher for World Animal Protection, said there were loopholes in the law and significant gaps in monitoring.

Muinde told AFP the increased trade was “deeply concerning.”

“It reflects a system that treats sentient beings as mere commodities rather than living beings,” he said.

Animals usually come from overcrowded and unhygienic breeding farms that also pose public health risks, he added.

The report futher highlighted discrepancies between exporter and importer figures, with more than 84,000 leopard tortoises and over 30,000 chameleons from two different species unaccounted for.

“Legal trade does not automatically equal sustainable trade,” said Tennyson Williams, the regional director at World Animal Protection.

“If you continue to extract wildlife from its source, you are likely to deplete that source, and that will create an imbalance in the ecosystem,” he added, stressing the organisation is against both legal and illegal wildlife trade.

In recent months, ant smuggling has made headlines in Kenya, with several people, including foreigners, arrested while attempting to leave the country with thousands of ants.