Abstract
Our review of the CITES trade database confirmed that the ball python is the most exported species by Togo; with 1,657,814 live individuals – comprising 60% of all live reptiles – reported by importing countries since 1978 (almost 55,000 annually since 1992). In total, 99% of the ball pythons legally exported from Togo under CITES were intended for commercial use, presumably as exotic pets. Since the turn of the century, wild-sourced snakes exported from Togo have been largely replaced with ranched snakes, to the extent that in the last 10 years 95% of these live exports were recorded using CITES source code “R” with the majority destined for the USA. We found discrepancies in the CITES trade database that suggest ball python exports were consistently underestimated by Togo and that both ranched and wild-sourced ball python annual quotas have been exceeded on multiple occasions including as recently as 2017. Furthermore, our field visits to seven of these “python farms” revealed that they are also involved in the commercial trade in at least 46 other reptile species, including eight that are already involved in formal CITES trade reviews due to concerns regarding their sustainability and legality. Ranching operations in West Africa were once thought to provide a degree of protection for the ball python; however, in light of recent research, there is growing concern that ranching may not confer any significant net conservation benefits. Further scrutiny and research are required to ensure the long-term survival of wild ball python and other reptile species populations in Togo.
Highlights
The exotic pet trade is an enormous global enterprise (Bush et al 2014) involving international trade in millions of individuals of thousands of species, only some of which are regulated [under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)] (Can et al 2019)
Ranching is a production system, intended as a potential solution to the unsustainable harvest of wild animals, dependent on “farms” that do not function as farms in the traditional agricultural sense, rather they are continually dependent on a wild source that is by definition “surplus” to the wild population [i.e. that portion of the population that would likely suffer naturally high mortality rates in the wild (CITES glossary 2019, https://www. cites.org/eng/resources/terms/glossary.php)]
Ball python trade records, documenting exports from Togo between 1978 and 2017, represented the export of between 963,344 and 1,657,814 live individuals – these figures comprised 53% of all live reptiles reported by Togo as exports during this period (Fig. 1; or 60% of all live reptiles reported as exports from Togo by importing countries)
Summary
The exotic pet trade is an enormous global enterprise (Bush et al 2014) involving international trade in millions of individuals of thousands of species, only some of which are regulated [under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)] (Can et al 2019). To assess the long-term sustainability of such trades, an understanding of trade patterns is crucial With this remit, trade in ball pythons (Python regius) (a popular pet in many countries, the USA), exported by Togo (one of the species’ Range States, and one of the main source countries involved in international export), is an informative case study – in part because it illustrates an almost complete shift from wild-captured individuals to the use of ranching. We focus on the farms involved in ball python trade (the extent and changing nature of their trade, including the markets that they supply, and other reptiles collected for export), elsewhere we address ball python supply (D’Cruze et al 2020a) and trade links with neighbouring Range States (Harrington et al in prep.)
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