U.S. demand for pets and skins threatens some African animals
A new report highlights some of the animals most commonly exported from Africa, including ball pythons, emperor scorpions, and elephants.
Many of Africa’s most exported animals end up in the United States, according to a new report by World Animal Protection (WAP), an international nonprofit that promotes animal welfare. The report, shared early exclusively with National Geographic, focuses on legal gross exports from Africa of both live animals and skins of animals that are listed on the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a global treaty that regulates the wildlife trade.
The five most commonly traded, CITES-listed, live animals for the legal exotic pet trade were the ball python, African gray parrot, emperor scorpion, leopard tortoise, and savanna monitor lizard.
Between 2011 and 2015, WAP found, hundreds of thousands of these animals
