Study uncovers laundering of Galápagos iguanas through wildlife export permits

Galápagos iguanas look like prehistoric animals: Their scaly skin resembles volcanic rock, their backs are ridged with a row of spikes, and they have extremely long, curved claws. They use their tails as a whip to defend themselves, but even that hasn’t been enough to prevent poachers from capturing and trafficking them to North America, Africa, Asia and Europe.

These iguanas are prized by collectors, and are worth a small fortune on the black market. “They are sought after because they’re unique species,” said Christian Sevilla, the director of island ecosystem conservation and restoration for Galápagos National Park. Each iguana can sell for tens of thousands of dollars on the black market.

The legality is convoluted and, at best, questionable, according to new research published in the journal Biological Conservation. Dozens of iguanas have been legally exported from Ecuador, which has jurisdiction over the Galápagos Islands, and moved between countries including Mali, Uganda and Switzerland, under permits issued by CITES, the global wildlife trade convention signed by 185 nations.

But Ecuador, the only place in the world where these iguanas live in the wild, has never permitted the export of live specimens, according to Sevilla, a co-author of the study. Neither the park nor Ecuador’s environment ministry granted CITES permits for the international trade of these threatened reptiles.

A group of experts on reptiles and wildlife trafficking investigated how this trade occurs. The team, led by Mark Auliya of the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change in Germany, delved into archives and reviewed documents, including those from CITES, as well as media coverage reporting trade and trafficking of these animals.

They found, Sevilla said, that “the greatest problem lies in the lack of rigorous verification on the part of the third countries.” A large portion of the trade between continents fell under “Category C,” meaning the specimens had been declared captive bred. However, researchers found that import countries didn’t confirm the origins of these animals or their parents.

Extraordinary Galápagos iguanas

The first iguanas are thought to have reached the Galápagos Islands floating on rafts of vegetation, possibly kelp or sargassum, carried by ocean currents. The reptiles evolved over millions of years to adapt to this environment, splitting off into four species that are endemic to the archipelago. “There is evidence,” said Washington Tapia, a biologist who specializes in biological diversity and is a co-author of the study, that the Galápagos yellow land iguana and the marine iguana “diverged a million years ago.”

Three of them live on land: the yellow land iguana (Conolophus subcristatus), the Santa Fe land iguana (C. pallidus) and the pink land iguana (C. marthae). The fourth evolved as a marine species, the only one of its kind in the world, Amblyrhynchus cristatus.

Although the pink iguana was only formally described by scientists in 2009, it has an ancient history, differentiating from its common ancestor 3.5 million years ago. Roughly 300 individuals inhabit an extremely limited area around Wolf Volcano, on Isabela Island. This species is critically endangered; the other three are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

The Ecuadorian government established Galápagos National Park in 1959, the country’s first, motivated by the existence of these and other species that are unique to this corner of the world. The park protects almost 97% of the archipelago. In 1978, the Galápagos Islands became the first UNESCO World Heritage Site on the planet.

Local, national and international measures have been implemented to protect the islands’ biodiversity. Removing any plant or animal from the islands carries serious penalties under a special law. Wildlife trafficking in Ecuador in general is punishable by up to three years in prison.

The Galápagos iguanas are also protected under CITES Appendix II, which allows international trade only with the approval of the CITES authority of the country of origin. However, Ecuador doesn’t authorize international trade of these unique reptiles.

An unknown method of capturing iguanas

The study’s authors couldn’t determine how traffickers had obtained the iguanas. The islands are heavily guarded, with 300 park rangers patrolling the national park’s 8,000 square kilometers (3,090 square miles), in addition to 143,000 km2 (55,200 mi2) of Galápagos Marine Reserve and 60,000 km2 (23,200 mi2) of adjoining Hermandad Marine Reserve, according to Seville. It is, however, a massive area to patrol.

But the physical act of catching these iguanas is difficult: they fight back. “Holding these reptiles is far from easy,” Tapia said. “They hit with their tails, and if that doesn’t work, they try to bite. We suspect that the traffickers have the help of people who know how to handle these individuals.”

The removal of pink iguanas is particularly surprising because only park rangers who manage this species and researchers who have been authorized by the park can access Wolf Volcano, which is a rough and remote area. However, Sevilla said, “There are people who enter illegally.”

Camera traps used to monitor and protect this species have snapped images of people walking in the area. This confirms suspicions that residents of the Galápagos, who know these sites well, may be involved in trafficking, although no suspects have yet been identified.

The study highlighted the arrest of a German citizen in 2012 and a Mexican citizen in 2015 for attempts to take juvenile iguanas from the islands. Their small size makes it easy to transport and trade them in larger quantities than shipping adults, bringing higher profits to traffickers.

Juvenile iguanas also tend to adapt better to life in captivity and reproduce better. Another benefit is that in the event of an inspection, authorities may be more likely to believe that the iguanas were bred in captivity.

Trade made to appear legal through laundering

In 2010, a canine unit at the Galápagos airport detected two live marine iguanas and a dead sea turtle in a secret compartment of a package, but the person in possession of the package managed to flee. Sevilla said wildlife trafficking, just like drug trafficking or human trafficking, aims to bypass every checkpoint, making it hard to assess the true numbers of iguanas entering the trade.

The study indicated that international trade of these species might have begun around that time, noting another illegal export of two yellow land iguanas and another two pink land iguanas, shipped first to Mali and then on to Switzerland. However, the data in the documents reflect inconsistencies. For example, the CITES database indicates that Switzerland reported the import of only two land iguanas from the Galápagos. Later, in 2012, Switzerland recorded the import of three marine iguanas — from Mali.

All of the iguanas were labeled as captive-bred, although the authors confirmed that Mali never reported an import of these species, hence there can’t have been any legal breeding of the iguanas there. “It appears that these animals may have been smuggled out of Ecuador, eventually to Mali, where they were ‘laundered’ by declaring them as ‘captive-bred’ for export to Switzerland,” the authors wrote.

In 2014, Switzerland granted CITES permits for the export of four Galápagos land iguanas and two marine iguanas to Uganda, which could in theory have been used to establish a captive-breeding program. By doing this, the authors say that Switzerland approved legal export of these animals from Africa.

“The states that are part of CITES are supposed to have the obligation of verifying the legal origin of any specimen, but in this case, it is noteworthy that none of the countries consulted with Ecuador about the origin of the specimens,” Tapia said.

Mongabay Latam tried to contact officials from Mali, Switzerland and Uganda, as well as the CITES media secretary, but as of the time this story was first published, only a Ugandan representative had offered a response. “I cannot share information, discuss or respond to uninvestigated and made-up stories in the media,” George Owoyesigire wrote in an email. Owoyesigire is the main wildlife director at Uganda’s Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities.

Uganda’s role as a center of operations

Between 2017 and 2023, Uganda reported the export of 64 iguanas. All but one of them were categorized as captive-bred. The main importing countries were in East and Southeast Asia. However, there were contradictory declarations. Importers reported receiving 47 individuals, 17 fewer than Uganda had declared it sent.

The report outlined other alleged inconsistencies. In 2019, Sudan declared the re-export of two Galápagos land iguanas from Uganda; however, Uganda didn’t register the shipment in its list of exports. That same year, Ugandan CITES authorities reported the export of four marine iguanas to Japan. However, Japan recorded the import of four marine iguanas, purportedly bred in captivity four years before, from Mali.

In 2022, a shipment of two iguanas from Uganda to South Korea used the label “F,” which denotes animals born in captivity (first generation or later), at a breeding facility not registered as a CITES-approved commercial operation.

The authors also discovered evidence linking Thomas Price, a U.S.-Finnish dual citizen, to reptile trafficking. In 2010, he was sentenced to 15 weeks in prison in New Zealand for attempting to smuggle geckos out of the country. In 2012, a photo posted on Facebook showed him with Gustavo Eduardo Toledo Albarrán, a Mexican national who was arrested in 2015 for attempting to smuggle iguanas from the Galápagos to Uganda.

Toledo also leads the CTC Conservation Center in Lukalu, Uganda, which harbors Galápagos land and marine iguanas. The facility allows hands-on contact with wildlife, a practice that frequently points to questionable activities. Another Facebook photo, posted in 2022, shows Price with two individuals, Thai and German citizens, who had been identified as reptile traffickers. On at least two occasions, the Thai citizen used social media to offer very young Galápagos iguanas for sale.

The challenges of protecting Galápagos iguanas

Tapia explained the important ecological role that these reptiles play. Iguanas and turtles in the Galápagos are the main seed dispersers. They’re also ecosystem engineers, controlling vegetation, which creates the right conditions for other species to thrive.

This is why trafficking of these species can cause enormous damage to the archipelago, as well as irreversible harm to these unique species. “If someone removes 10 pink iguanas, the impact on the population would be large. We are talking about a significant percentage of the population,” Tapia said.

After reviewing the iguana trade, in 2010 CITES’s EU scientific examination group recommended stopping import permits for Galápagos iguanas. However, according to the new study, Switzerland continued to export and import these species. In another review, the verdict was upheld in 2020.

At the meeting of the CITES’s permanent Committee in March 2022, the CITES authority from Ecuador presented evidence that issuing permits for animals “of illegal origin” and their alleged captive-bred offspring undermines the integrity of the Appendix II permit system.

Right now, according to Sevilla, Ecuador’s environment ministry is working on a proposal to move Galápagos iguanas from CITES Appendix II to Appendix I, which provides a higher level of protection. This would ban all exports except for those intended for approved research or conservation efforts.

“The greatest challenge is going to be the retroactive cancellation of the permits that have already been issued and the confiscation of the traded specimens,” Sevilla said.

Even if this goal is met, Tapia said he worries about the dynamics of the illegal wildlife industry: “For as long as there is demand, there will always be someone who will create some availability. There are people with a lot of money interested in including these species in their private collections.”

 
Banner image: Galápagos land iguanas control vegetation, which allows other species to thrive. Image courtesy of Jorge Carrión/Galápagos Conservancy.

This story was first published here in Spanish on April 21, 2025.

Citation:

Auliya, M., Nijman, V., Altherr, S., Aguilera, W. T., Ariano-Sanchéz, D., Cantu, J. C., … Weissgold, B. (2025). Trafficking of Galápagos iguanas as an example of a global problem: CITES permits, laundering and the role of transit countries in Europe and Africa. Biological Conservation, 305, 111104. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2025.111104