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Abstract
The ball python (Python regius) is the single most exported live CITES-listed species from Africa, with a large proportion of snakes being sourced from Togo, West Africa, officially via a system reported nationally as “ranching”. This study represents the first in-depth review of ball python hunting being carried out by rural communities in Togo for nearly 15 years. Our approach, focused at the bottom of the trade chain, permitted extensive detailed data to be collected from hunters, and provides a unique insight into the practices, drivers and impacts associated with this type of large-scale commercial wildlife trade activity. We show that ball python hunting remains an economically valuable endeavour for these rural hunters. However, it also highlights a number of potential legal, conservation and animal welfare issues associated with the current hunting practices being carried out in Togo (and neighbouring range States) to supply the snake farms and ultimately the international exotic pet trade. Our findings suggest that the methods applied on the ground do not accurately reflect those being reported to national authorities and international regulatory mechanisms such as CITES. This irregular, if not illegal, trade may also be unsustainable, as suggested by hunters reporting that there are fewer ball pythons in the wild than there were five years previously. We recommend that additional scientific investigation (focusing on the size and status of the wild population), better management, and enforcement of regulations, are required to ensure that ball python populations are managed in a sustainable, legal and traceable way.
Highlights
Snakes are hugely popular as exotic pets and are traded alive globally in large numbers (e.g., Hoover 1998; Auliya 2003; Bush et al 2014)
Reptiles may be produced via a process of “ranching”, one definition being the “rearing in a controlled environment of animals taken as eggs or juveniles from the wild, where they would otherwise have had a very low probability of surviving to adulthood” (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora [CITES] definition; Lyons et al 2017)
With regards to international regulations, our findings suggest that both exporter country and CITES source codes are misrepresentative
Summary
Snakes are hugely popular as exotic pets and are traded alive globally in large numbers (e.g., Hoover 1998; Auliya 2003; Bush et al 2014). Snakes, and other reptiles, are captive-bred for the pet trade both in source and destination countries (Brant 2001; Bush et al 2014; Herrel and Meijden 2014). Unlike wildlife farming, there have been relatively fewer studies, of which we are aware, of large-scale management operations that export live wild animals and their derivatives using the CITES source code “R”, and their links with (and impacts on) wild populations, with the exception of those addressing crocodilian ranching (e.g., Jenkins et al 2004). A species of particular interest in this regard is the ball python (Python regius), which is the single most exported live CITES-listed species from Africa (CITES Trade Database, https://trade.cites.org), the vast majority of which are exported as “ranched” specimens (source code R) (CITES Trade Database, https://trade.cites.org; see Robinson et al 2015)
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