Despite a near-complete ban on exporting Australian wildlife, smuggling of Australian reptiles and amphibians into international trade continues largely unmonitored. We quantify the scale of this unregulated trade and highlight the gap between domestic protections and what is actually reaching overseas markets.
We found a pattern between US reptile trade and smuggling of live reptiles to Australia. Almost all species smuggled to Aus are legal in US trade and are popular We compared illegal smuggling of reptiles into Australia to the legal pet trade of reptiles in the US. We provide the first empirical risk watch-list for desirable reptile species being trafficked into Australia. Our findings give insight into the drivers of illegal wildlife trade and our approach provides a framework for anticipating future trends in wildlife smuggling.