Australia's common backyard creatures sold for thousands overseas
Animals Aussies take for granted are highly valued overseas and are sold for huge sums online.
Common reptiles Aussies might spot in their gardens are being sold for thousands of dollars overseas. But before you start dreaming of getting rich quick by flogging a few to our American cousins, there’s a prohibitive reason you can’t.
Exports of Australia’s wildlife for commercial purposes have been banned for over three decades, although exceptions are generally only made for zoos. This has made the country’s native animals highly desirable to the exotic trade which is now a multi-billion-dollar industry.
While much of the trade is the progeny of animals taken overseas before the ban, criminals will also routinely risk jail time trying to smuggle them over our borders.
Huge price gap when Aussie wildlife sold overseas
On a popular US marketplace, a legally-bred Aussie water dragon will set you back US $600 (AU$888), a gecko US $1,800 (AU$2,700) and a shingleback US $7,850 (AU$11,600).
Chris Williams, the president of the Australian Herpetological Society — a group that advocates for the study and rearing of reptiles — said in Australia these species would retail for a fraction of those prices.
“It’s a supply and demand thing. And the demand is in the USA, Europe and Asia,” he told Yahoo News.
“Over here a water dragon is less than $100 and a knob-tailed gecko is a few hundred dollars — we’re drowning in them. And shinglebacks, which are killed on the roads all the time, would be in the hundreds, not in the thousands.”
Related: 'Horrendous' statistic affecting iconic shingleback lizards
How do we solve illegal smuggling of wildlife?
The 1982 ban on exports of Australian wildlife was designed to help stop native animals being poached from the bush and sold to rich collectors and in markets overseas.
In September, research from the University of Adelaide found 163 of Australian reptile species (16 per cent) and seven frog species (3 per cent) have been recently traded as pets overseas. While many are legally bred, seizure records it examined showed a small amount were illegally bred.
The report’s authors urged the federal government to deploy more sophisticated online surveillance methods and use legislation to better protect native reptiles. But Williams thinks overhauling regulations to allow licensed collectors to trade would also help reduce poaching.
“Illegal poaching is viable because there is no legal export. The animals I’m suggesting be sent overseas are multi-generational captive-bred animals,” he said.
“A wild caught animal will never do as well in captivity as one that’s captive bred. Even in Australia the market for wild animals is so close to zero it’s not funny, because we have animals that are bred in captivity don’t stress as much and are more robust— they’re bullet proof.
“Captive blue-tongues, carpet pythons, and children's pythons are more like domestic animals.”
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How does Australia treat its wildlife at home?
When Australia’s native animals are filmed in captivity overseas, there’s often an outcry back home about their poor treatment. Recent examples include a kookaburra being sold in a pet shop, and kangaroos being shot as trophies at a Texas ranch. But before casting the first stone, he thinks Aussies need to reflect on how we treat our wildlife here.
“Shinglebacks are incredibly common and lots get killed on the roads every year,” he said. But there's an even greater issue affecting the nation's wildlife he thinks should be addressed — the number of animals killed using permits frequently handed out by state governments.
Related: Shooters brag about killing rare Australian kangaroos
Figures show that in the five years to 2023, the NSW Government approved licences to kill 1.9 million kangaroos, and that doesn’t include species shot by the commercial harvesting industry, which supplies the cheap meat for the major pet food suppliers.
The NSW Government also approved the killing of 200,000 other iconic native animals. This included sulphur-crested cockatoos 25,378 — a species that mates for life and can live for a century, 64,940 corellas, 2,238 lorikeets and 2,083 bare-nosed wombats.
“That's where I find that hypocrisy really kicks in. They hate the thought of illegal trafficking, but they won't allow legal export, and they will allow culling to take place on an industrial scale,” he said.
“To me it’s such a weird disconnect. It's like they’re saying we've got to protect our precious fauna from going overseas, but here we can shoot it.”
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