Image by Terri Sharp from Pixabay
December 24, 2024 – WASHINGTON— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service used its Endangered Species Act emergency authority on Monday to protect an Indonesian monitor lizard that is highly coveted in the pet trade. Monday’s listing follows a 2022 petition by the Center for Biological Diversity and protects the species for 240 days while the Service undertakes the public process to finalize protections.
“I’m delighted the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed that these lizards need emergency protection,” said Dianne Dubois, a staff scientist at the Center. “Far too many animals teetering on the brink of extinction are being collected into oblivion to fuel the U.S. pet trade. It’s high time we started using emergency listings and everything else in the toolbox to protect reptiles, amphibians and aquarium fish from this unsustainable demand.”
The blue tree monitor lizard only exists in the wild on Batanta Island in Indonesia, where its population has been devastated by collection for the pet trade and habitat loss. The biggest driver of the trade is the exotic pet market in the United States. Monday’s emergency listing bans the import and sale of blue tree monitor lizards in the United States.
“This ban on imports to the United States will finally give these lizards a chance to recover in the wild, but we need to act fast to protect the species permanently or risk extinction,” said DuBois. “I hope this listing is a wakeup call to Indonesia to improve its management of all species in the pet trade.”
The International Union for Conservation of Nature assessed the blue tree monitor lizard as endangered in 2017, finding that the animals face a very high risk of extinction in the wild. The species is now considered rare in places where it was once commonly sighted, and they have likely been wiped out from at least one part of their range.
More than 1,800 of the world’s reptile species are threatened with extinction. The pet trade has been connected to declines and local extinctions of reptile species in the wild.
The exotic pet trade in the United States is among the largest in the world, involving hundreds of millions of animals each year. Reptiles are very common in the global wildlife trade, with close to 4,000 species traded since 2000.
More than 600 foreign species are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The act protects foreign endangered species by banning their import and sale, increasing awareness, and providing financial assistance.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Source: Center for Biological Diversity
