Aussie woman's $20,000 fine for garage secret highlights 'sad' $30 billion issue

The underground wildlife trade, worth $27 billion a year globally, now ranks fourth in terms of the world’s illegal trades.

Joe Attanasio
·Senior Reporter
·3-min read
The Nambour woman's garage is seen with a number of reptile tanks.
A Queensland woman has been fined over $20,000 after she was found in possession of a number of native reptiles, suspected to have been obtained illegally. Source: DETSI

An Australian woman has been slapped with more than $20,000 in fines after authorities discovered she had been keeping and selling native reptiles believed to have been illegally snatched from the wild.

After a tip-off from a member of the public, officers with Queensland's Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DESI) attended a residence at Nambour on the Sunshine Coast in January. There, they located and seized 18 reptile eggs and 26 reptiles — many of which were found to be in poor health.

DESI officers said the discovery highlights the "increasing trend in people seeking to profit from high prices" that "our unique wildlife" fetch on domestic and international markets.

Senior Wildlife Officer Jonathan McDonald denounced the woman's behaviour and said snakes and reptiles require specialised care, food and equipment to stay healthy in captivity — much of which was not present at the Nambour residence. "Sadly, several of the reptiles were in poor condition and needed to be humanely euthanised," McDonald said.

Multiple snakes are seen in the Nambour woman's garage, in tanks.
The woman admitted to knowingly keeping the animals without valid licences, purchasing animals from unlicensed sellers and operating a reptile business. Source: DETSI

"The surviving reptiles can never be released to the wild as they may have been exposed to disease while they were in captivity." An independent veterinary exam of the reptiles seized revealed medical conditions among many of the animals — including necrosis (death of body tissue), dehydration, neurological defects and general poor health.

The Nambour woman admitted to knowingly keeping the animals without valid licences, purchasing animals from unlicensed sellers and operating a reptile business. She also could not produce mandatory records of sale for 13 of her purchased animals, DESI said.

She was found to be in possession of a northern blue-tongue lizard, a Woma python, carpet python, shingleback lizard, inland bearded dragon, children’s python, Murray-Darling carpet python, broad-shelled turtle, spotted python and Centralian carpet python, among others.

Globally, illegal wildlife trafficking is estimated to be worth $27 billion a year and now ranks fourth in terms of the world’s illegal trades after drugs, counterfeit products and human trafficking.

Multiple lizards are seen in tanks in the Nambour woman's garage.
Several of the reptiles were in poor condition and needed to be humanely euthanised. Source: DETSI

Late last month, Yahoo News Australia spoke with Ben Pearson, country director at World Animal Protection. He echoed much of McDonald's sentiment, saying there's likely a "league of illegal wildlife trading going on" in Australia, right under our noses, after a wallaby turned up dead in regional Slovakia on October 30.

"Australian animals across all the [world] are just very unique," he earlier told Yahoo. "They're endemic to Australia, and so they're really prized overseas." "The more I'm seeing this, the more concerned I get. The government needs to start thinking, all right, how is this happening?"

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