In the market for a new pet? May be something a bit exotic? For many consumers, reptiles and amphibians are just the things: geckos, monitors, pythons, tree frogs, boas, turtles and many more species are available in seemingly endless varieties, many brilliantly coloured, some exceedingly rare.

Exotic reptiles and amphibians began surging in popularity in the early 1990s, not only in the United States but also in Europe and Japan. From 2004 to 2014, the European Union imported nearly 21 million of these animals; an estimated 4.7 million households in the United States owned at least one reptile in 2016. But popularity has spawned an enormous illegal trade, conservationists say. Many reptiles sold as pets are said to have been bred in captivity and sales of those animals are legal. In fact, many were illegally captured in the wild.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) identified 18 instances in which reptiles and amphibians are exported as captive bred, but likely are not The examples included Indian star tortoises from Jordan, red-eyed tree frogs from Nicaragua and savanna monitors from Ghana and Togo.

Dozens of countries export reptiles and other exotic animals labeled captive bred, but Indonesia stands out. At least 80 per cent of the 5,000 plus green pythons, for instance, annually exported from the country as captive bred were caught illegally in the wild, depleting some island populations.

Plucking animals from the wild is cheaper and easier than setting up a breeding operation. This is especially true for low-profit animals like Tokay geckos, which are traded at such high volumes that it would not make economic sense to invest in breeding them.

Generally, villagers capture animals in forests and fields and sell them to middlemen who hand them off to legal reptile farms. The owners of the farms acquire government paperwork certifying that the animals were captive bred. Once a wild-caught animal is exported with paperwork certifying it as captive bred, officials in countries like the United States have little choice but to allow it in.