Solutions to the risks posed by the global pet trade could be enacted quickly

The global pet trade, particularly in exotic reptiles and amphibians, poses significant biodiversity and potential human health risks, scientists say; yet compared to other pressing crises like climate change, the solutions are relatively simple — if only governments would act on them. Susan Lieberman, vice president for international policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society, based in the U.S., and Sandra Altherr, co-founder and head of science at Pro Wildlife, in Germany, join the Mongabay Newscast this week to discuss these solutions, which they’ve outlined in a commentary published in the journal Nature. “The international wildlife trade for pets, reptiles, amphibians, and other species is a massive experiment,” Lieberman says. “It’s an experiment to see what diseases can come from one part of the world into another part of the world, and ‘let’s see what happens.’ I think it’s an experiment we should not be undertaking.” But the “exotic pet trade could be regulated very quickly, and this risk could be reduced very quickly,” Altherr adds. Both guests discuss what they identify as the main legal gaps that world governments could close, such as the fact that countries of origin have no or little legal recourse for species sold outside their borders. Another gap is that the CITES, the global convention on the wildlife trade, is often poor at taking a proactive approach to protect species before they become threatened, the authors argue. And species being pushed toward the brink of extinction don’t have the luxury of time for the long…This article was originally published on

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